GALAXY QUEST
DreamWorks
Starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub,
Sam Rockwell, Daryl Mitchell, Enrico Colantoni
Music by David Newman
Photographed by Jerzy Zielinski
Written by David Howard and Robert Gordon
Directed by Dean Parisot
DreamWorks' Galaxy Quest may
be the first movie with a promotional TV special that's as clever and entertaining
as the film itself. Shortly before Galaxy Quest's release,
the Sci-Fi Channel aired "The
Galaxy Quest 20th Anniversary Special,"
a making-of special disguised as a documentary about the history
of the movie's fictional network TV space opera Galaxy Quest,
which, like Star Trek, became a cult phenomenon long after
its abrupt cancellation. In the special, stars Tim Allen, Sigourney
Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub and Daryl Mitchell were interviewed
not as themselves, but as the washed-up TV actors they play in
the movie. The mockumentary's interview segments with Allen's
vain, peabrained alter ego, series star Jason Nesmith, were three
times more hilarious than an average episode of Home Improvement.
"The Galaxy Quest 20th Anniversary Special"
was an inspired appetizer for an equally inspired film, a fantasy comedy about
sci-fi hero worship that's more appreciative of the fans than last year's Roger
Nygard documentary Trekkies, which was appreciative too, but to an extent.
While Galaxy Quest does poke fun at fans who have a hard time distinguishing
TV from reality, it's a rather gentle ribbing; in the end, the film celebrates
their imagination and their adoration of sci-fi heroes and the actors who play
them. (Whereas the two-faced Trekkies attempts to humanize this misunderstood,
much-ridiculed group and then turns around and caters to stereotypes of Trek
fans as sick and socially retarded by focusing on the loonier fans, including
a woman whose obsession with actor Brent Spiner caused one reviewer to say the
film's segment about her was "sad," and ignoring the fans who actually
have lives, like author and "first-generation" Trek fan Bjo
Trimble. Which is why I relate more to the depiction of sci-fi fans in Robert
Meyer Burnett and Mark A. Altman's rival film, the semiautobiographical romantic
comedy Free Enterprise, than to the portrayals of costumed nutcases in
Trekkies. My experiences as an aficionado are more like Burnett and Altman's,
as well as Allen's, who, in an interview on Amazon.com's official Galaxy
Quest site, admits to collecting sci-fi movie memorabilia. I can memorize
Trek episode lines and plots, and I've collected comics and sci-fi movies,
but I'm not the type of fanboy who would walk around all day wearing a Starfleet
uniform.)
Allen, the voice of the deluded Buzz
Lightyear in the Toy Story movies, plays another deluded
would-be hero, the egotistical Nesmith, best known for his role
as Galaxy Quest's valiant starship commander Peter Quincy
Taggert. Nesmith is convinced he's still a TV star even though
he and his Galaxy Quest co-stars haven't found much work
since the show's 1982 cancellation because of typecasting (something
the likes of Star Wars' Mark
Hamill, Batman's Adam
West and the original Trek actors are sure to be familiar
with). The other Galaxy Quest players include resident
babe Gwen DiMarco (Weaver in a dyed-blond Farrah hairdo and low-cut,
skintight jumpsuit a la Erin Grey in Buck Rogers
— it's a kick to see a great actor playing a lousy one) and
Alexander Dane (Rickman, who never once takes off his Spock-like
alien character's headpiece). Nesmith's co-stars are more realistic
about their situation, which finds them relegated to appearances
at electronics store openings and sci-fi conventions. The Shakespeare-trained
Dane, who plays the extraterrestrial officer Dr. Lazarus, is the
crankiest of the bunch. He has an ongoing rivalry with Nesmith
(patterned after Leonard Nimoy's famously documented tensions
with William Shatner during the filming of the original Trek,
one of the film's many amusing Trek references), and he
rues the day he passed up the stage for this silly TV role.
The surly actors keep wishing for a life away from signing
autographs and answering endless fanboy questions about the show's ship, the
NSEA Protector. They unexpectedly get their wish when a group of extraterrestrial
fans who think the Galaxy Quest episodes are "historical documents"
beam the actors into space and seek their help in defeating an evil reptilian
overlord, General Sarris (obviously named after film critic and auteur theory
champion Andrew Sarris). The giddy aliens, known as Thermians and led by the
childlike Mathesar (Enrico Colantoni), have even built for their heroes an actual
ship that's an exact replica of the Protector. The actors' shocked reactions
are priceless, as they discover props that actually work and get caught up in
fighting gigantic rock monsters that were nothing more than cheap effects on
the old show. Forced to give the ultimate performances of their careers, the
self-centered Nesmith learns about teamwork, Dane learns to appreciate his fans
and everyone learns to "never give up, never surrender" (the show's
mantra).
Galaxy Quest is directed with class and
inventiveness by Dean Parisot. He even plays around with the aspect
ratio (the frame is as wide as a TV program's during an opening
clip from the show and is expanded to the "Academy ratio"
during the early scenes and then finally to widescreen when Nesmith
and his co-stars agree to join the Thermians in their cause).
Rickman, a genius with timing, has turned into the year's finest
comic support, in a role that out-grumps and out-grimaces his
wonderfully testy Metatron character in Dogma. Even the
supporting players get to shine as much as the leads. Sam Rockwell
is a riot as a coward with a Johnny Depp-as-Ed Wood face, an extra
whose forgotten character was killed off in one of the episodes
and who fears expiring early in this episode brought to life.
Also amusing are the actors who play the puppy-dog-like, silly-walking
Thermians, including Colantoni and Missi Pyle as a gorgeous officer
who walks around with a goofy Pepsodent ad smile that never wavers
once during the entire film. It's a grin you'll have too as you
watch Galaxy Quest.
© 2008 Jim Aquino