Movie Log: Galaxy Quest

For some movies, it's more than slightly self-obsessed of me to say anything other than "Yes, I finally saw that one," given that most of the world has seen said movie at least twice by this point. One of those movies -- perhaps the king of those movies -- is Galaxy Quest, which I saw en famile this past Friday evening.

(The Wife has been mentioning that I should see it for quite some time, saying that it's about "my people." Since I'm a massive contrarian, that made me not want to see it -- and now, afterward, I also want to disclaim any kinship to my supposed people. She says similar things about the sitcom The Big Bang Theory -- which, by the way, I insist on calling "Four Nerds and a Hottie" at all time, since I'm sure that was how it was pitched -- which hasn't, so far, stopped me from enjoying that, either.)

Galaxy Quest isn't quite the parody of Star Trek that some people have called it; there is a Star Trek parody embedded in it, yes, but that's the show-within-a-show, and it's left implied most of the time so that the movie can ape Star Trek instead. The movie itself wants to be meaningful and emotional and have arcs for most of its characters, and so neglects the joke side of the equation for half-hours at a time. (And so, while my sons enjoyed it, they're still much fonder of Spaceballs, a movie that lets nothing get in the way of the search for a good joke. Or a bad one, for that matter.)

It is funny, and it understands the fan mentality well, but it's a very lightweight movie, full of cliches (such as the oh-so-evil, and glaringly reptilian villain) that it doesn't try to spin into comedy. It's not quite as smart as I've seen claimed, but it's a sturdy bit of SFnal entertainment that, mostly, comes down on the side of the fanboys -- and so of course it's been massively embraced.
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Listening to: The Deathray Davies - I'm From The Future
via FoxyTunes