That moment when they need volunteers for a horrible space death.

No Dreck on This Trek.

In its swinging skewering of that TV series which featured that Vulcan guy and that Overacting guy, GALAXY QUEST is everything that the SCARY MOVIE parody franchise is not: well-produced, well-written, well-acted – and funny.

Action Man Poffy

Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen) is the ex-captain of a television starship not unlike that one that boldly goes where no man has gone before, from a show which was cancelled 20 years ago, GALAXY QUEST. He and his crew, typecast for eternity as the crew of “The NSEA Protector,” fill their weary, laurel-resting days appearing at science fiction conventions, mall openings and autograph signings.

In what must be closer to the scathing truth than any real life series typecastee would care to admit, Nesmith’s crew moan en masse at their fate, which is double-edged: forced to dork themselves and recite lines from 20 years ago, but able to pay the rent for it. Living long. But not prospering. All except for Nesmith, who enlivens his role as action captain just a little too over-dramatically, not unlike that enterprising captain from that 60’s show.

There is ex-Shakespearean, Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman; though the loudest wheel in disparaging the GALAXY QUEST legacy, never thinks to remove the ludicrous latex headgear that buries him in the role of his alien character – the obvious Science Officer to Nesmith’s Cheesy Captain); Sigourney Weaver, a world away from Ripley, giving a Breasts-First performance as Gwen DeMarco (whose sole spacefaring job is repeating the captain’s orders to the computer and repeating the computers replies back to the captain), and the underrated Tony Shalhoub as Fred Kwan (parodying that Scottish engineer fella, but on ‘ludes); and we all know Sam Rockwell‘s character – the crewman who is sent down to the planet with the major stars – only to NOT make it back to the ship alive (you know – for that touch of “realism”), appropriately named Guy – as in “Guy #6.”

As Dane might have elocuted 20 years ago, “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shocking them out of their stupor, the Galaxy Quest crew is abducted by an actual alien civilization, the benign Thermians – who over the years picked up transmissions of the series broadcasts, believing them to be “historical documents” rather than fiction – and seek their aid in defeating a real intergalactic villain named Sarris (Robin Sachs, in a fantastically diabolical performance, with makeup effects by legendary Stan Winston).

These “real” space sequences are where GALAXY QUEST pulls its biggest surprise. No quarter is spared in creating stunning space effects and authentic-looking alien monster villains. For the satire to run on steel-biting wheels, it was necessary to make this “real-life” intergalactic fracas as realistic as possible – otherwise director Dean Parisot would have had just another B-Movie on his hands with the cheapness and artificiality exhibited by the actual series he was spoofing!

The Protector crew must assimilate into their television personalities to weather the real intergalactic battle, as the Thermians, led by Mathesar and Teb (Enrico Colantoni and Jed Rees fleshing out their extraterrestrial roles with decidedly alien flair), have based their culture on the GALAXY QUEST canon – from its technical details (the NSEA Protector in operational full scale) to its slogans: “Never give up. Never surrender!”

This movie is to the 60’s series as Spinal Tap was to heavy metal: it captured all the insider jokes that true fans would notice, and laughed WITH the fans, not at them. Dane disdainfully notes Jason’s Shirtless penchant; a hallway for no reason has chompy, crushy things just to serve as obstacles; engineer Kwan’s method for assessing the breathability of an alien planet’s atmosphere is to open the hatch and take a sniff; all the while, Guy wailing whenever unnecessary risks are taken, as – being credited only as “Crewman Number 6” – he is certain he will be the first to die.

The hero-worshipping of the Protector crew by the Thermians lends itself to unexpected poignancy, when Dane, who holds his most famous phrase in contempt (“By Grabthar’s hammer, you will be avenged!”), unwittingly finds an opportunity to utter it, in grave sincerity, to someone for whom it carries worlds of weight – a dying Thermian who regarded Dane as his otherworldly father… How are we suddenly weeping?

GALAXY QUEST affectionately gives the fanboys their due as rocket scientists trapped in dweeb bodies, as ubergeek Brandon (the stammering Justin Long), with fan-researched tech specs, aids in saving the Protector, blowing up Sarris, and winging our heroes Earthward.

But when Sarris appears at the film’s finale (I mean, the villain-surviving-for-one-last-stab had to be exploited, right? Sigourney Weaver can testify to that!), it is up to Jason Nesmith to save the day with a cheese-alicious duck-and-roll and phaser powerblast worthy of… that guy in the yellow jersey (occasionally Shirtless and body-oiled) who made an art form of melodramatic pausing between lines – you know who I mean… by Grabthar’s hammer, the name’s on the tip of my tongue…

END

Not Much Fun with Dick and Jane.

To say that Adam Sandler is turning into a mediocre actor is a compliment of the highest order. To say the same thing about Jim Carrey is a tragedy for American Cinema.

Not exactly a “boring” movie – but FUN WITH DICK AND JANE (remade from the 1977 movie of the same name with George Segal and Jane Fonda) does not possess enough substance to squeeze out an entertaining review. Somebody wake me when this typing is done…

An upwardly-mobile family suddenly find themselves in a downwardly-spiraling tailspin. Both Dick Harper (Carrey) and his wife Jane (the simply stunning Téa Leoni) are out of work and so down on their luck that they turn to crime to pay the bills and retain their yuppie materialism. And we don’t need more than one hand to count the big laughs.

Veteran television director, Dean Parisot, with writers Judd Apatow, Nicholas Stoller and Peter Tolan, move the film at a breakneck pace, which leaves no time to question the childish plot or examine the one-dimensionality of the characters, coaxing about as many nervous titters and strained giggles as your average TV comedy, with the actors constantly reaching for gags that get away.

And there lies the problem: this is “your average TV comedy” writ large and tedious. Key word: average. Mediocre. Nice. Unexceptional. Okay. Beige. Vanilla. Very Un-Carrey.

See Poffy Steal

To this point in his career, Jim Carrey has not insulted us with “average” in any of his diverse roles. Even the seemingly mundane THE MAJESTIC saw him produce some of his finest “straight” dramatic moments on film. In DICK AND JANE he is floundering in a script written for a lesser comedian – maybe someone mid-beige, like his co-star from the devilishly wry THE CABLE GUY, Matthew Broderick, but not quite as American Ugly as a Rob Schneider or a Tom Arnold.

Carrey’s talents are still potent, evidenced in snatches like the Hendrix air-guitar-voicebox scene, and a scene where he plays a puppet, while drunk (on half a beer), these scenes only highlighting his lack of anything to do in the rest of the movie. He even spoofs his own acting talents in a scene where he reaches such a level of desperation that tears well up in his eyes as he tries to exact reparations directly from his CEO at gunpoint. Not one minute after the intense moment, he is laughingly boasting to his wife, “Did you see how I made my eyes water?”

There are intimations that the recession hindering Dick and Jane finding gainful employment is a George W. Bush phenomenon. But the movie is not a Bush-bash – if you blink, you miss the connection. There are grander issues at stake here – snide contradictions about morality and the ethics of crime.

For one brief moment, Dick contemplates prostituting Jane as a means to get by. Of course, in a PG-13 film, the female is required to act outraged at this suggestion – then she turns to burglary without a moment’s hesitation! Burglary, like prostitution, is illegal; like prostitution, immoral, and like prostitution, demoralizing. Unlike prostitution (which is a misdemeanor), burglary is a felony. (If Dick actually pimped Jane, he would be a felon.) These two desperadoes are painted as Good Christians trying to feed their son and keep their house, yet the same “christians” in the audience who would frown on prostitution, readily embrace burglary as a viable comedic device. Yet, if Dick and Jane are on the route of immorality – “immorality” as denoted by their society’s strictures – they might as well have turned to prostitution as a means to an end, for with Jane being such a magma-hot tamale, she could have easily clocked thousands of dollars a day escorting high-class businessmen, thereby achieving the goal of Quick Cash less illegally.

The movie tells us – snidely, of course – that dressing as a Blues Brother and armed robbing of a bank, or stealing a car and driving it through a jewelry store window is less reprehensible than selling your body. Yet a felony is a crime where harm is done to others and property; prostituting doesn’t harm anyone, hence a misdemeanor. Both are immoral acts – as you yourselves have decreed. So why vilify one and laugh at the other? Prostitution is not more immoral than burglary. Once you’ve crossed the moral line, which authority do you consult for “level” of immorality?

Movie also tells us that since the CEO was stealing money from his corporation, it is okay to steal the money back from him. Two wrongs DO make a right!

And are we to applaud Dick and Jane for being so attuned to each other’s criminal proclivities? One would imagine that if a married couple were thrown into destitution and one partner were to suggest burglary as a way out, the other partner (if they harbored a shred of decency) would protest to the point of defection in the marriage – yet these two are as ideologically bereft as each other, actually enjoying themselves to the point of playing “dress-up” with such outlandishly flamboyant costumes, we not only question their pragmatism, we wonder at their apprehension of morals at all.

In this frenetic film, many other actors somehow also find nothing to do: Alec Baldwin (as Dick’s CEO), Richard Jenkins (as Dick’s supervisor-turned-bum), and Jeff Garlin (out from under the protective skirts of Larry David, as an Office Manager).

A simple comedy for the simple-minded. See Dick? See Jane? No. See Carrey, see Leoni – but in something else.

END