Galaxy Quest
So it’s come to this. My first bad one. It was bound to happen at one point or another, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen quite this soon. Without any dillydallying from me, let’s just get right into it before I find some excuse to get out of it. Although, before I get started on the movie itself, I wanna talk about a common storytelling trope: the ‘Liar Revealed’.
This is a kind of storytelling trope almost as old as storytelling itself dating back to the Brothers Grimm’s The Brave Little Tailor where the protagonist(s) are believed to be something or someone they’re not by the other characters. They follow through with the lie either out of selfishness or some strongly held personal belief until they’re eventually caught in the lie causing the other characters to be hurt and reprimand the protagonist(s). Ultimately this causes the protagonist(s) to have a change of heart and the obvious lesson is learned that the protagonist(s) with their own unique set of skills were more than enough to save the day.
Some stories have utilized this trope well (Aladdin), while others have utilized it abysmally (Bushwhacked). Over the years it’s been proven that it’s much easier for screenwriters to utilize this trope abysmally than adequately, and this movie…utilizes it.
More than anything, this movie leans too hard into the trope to the point where everything that’s portrayed in it just becomes tired and predictable. What makes it more difficult to stomach for me is the fact that it’s supposed to be a comedy and the thing about comedy is that when it’s predictable it’s not funny. So many of the jokes in this film are just awkward and even uncomfortable to watch along with its terrible visual effects, but we’ll get to that when we get to that, and it all comes together to create an unfortunate mess of a movie. There’s a lot to get through and by Grabthar’s hammer I’mma do it.
Everyone set your phasers from stun to kill and let’s get right into Galaxy Quest. Whee…
To clarify some stuff up front, the film centers around actors of a television show called Galaxy Quest (Not the movie, but the show within the movie) and these actors are eventually mistaken for the characters they portray on the television show by a race of aliens called the Thermians who are under threat from an alien menace named Sarris (played by Robin Sachs). It’ll probably be a bit difficult to follow at first but if you stick with me I promise I’ll do my best to explain it clearly. So our cast of characters are Jason Nesmith (played by Tim Allen) who is the main actor on the show Galaxy Quest who plays the commander of the ship, the NSEA Protector, named Peter Quincy Taggert. With me so far? Okay, let’s keep going. Our supporting characters are Gwen DeMarco (played by Sigourney Weaver) who plays Lieutenant Tawny Madison, Alexander Dane (played by Alan Rickman) who plays Dr. Lazarus, Fred Kwan (played by Tony Shalhoub) who plays Tech Sgt. Chen, Tommy Webber (played by Daryl Mitchell) who plays Laredo, and Guy Fleegman (played by Sam Rockwell) who plays expendable crewman #6. Did you get all that? Yeah you did.
It’s clear that the Galaxy Quest TV show is heavily based on Star Trek with more heavy influences from Star Trek: The Next Generation as opposed to Star Trek: The Original Series. Given this as their inspiration, one of the things I was asking myself as I watched this was how much funnier this film could’ve been if it had actually written the story around the actors from the Star Trek: The Next Generation show. They could’ve had Patrick Stewart coming to grips with being thrust into a commanding role on a ship he had been supposedly in charge of for years while Brent Spiner could’ve been trying to act emotionless in a fantastical alien setting which would constantly test his acting skills and Gates McFadden could’ve been haphazardly trying to BS her way through medical school in real time.
Naturally you also wouldn’t have to set up their characters either because they’ve clearly been established for several years at this point, many people recognize them and understand their unique personalities and also would enjoy laughing at the absurd situation they find themselves in. This would also help the movie feel less run-of-the-mill and standard despite still sticking to the ‘Liar Revealed’ trope. The meta-ness in this setup would also help keep the audience invested and itching to see what happens next whether it be hilarious or terrifying. Heck, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare did this in a way that was clever, unique, and of course meta as heck which also pleased audiences well enough. Why couldn’t this movie have done the same? Well, instead of doing that clever idea, we instead are stuck with these jerkoffs we’ve never seen before and don’t care about in the slightest.
With that being said, let’s discuss the characters. Taking away each of their cookie-cutter character arcs (Oh, alliteration), they’re acted in a way that’s in no way memorable or fun with possibly the exception of Alan Rickman as Alexander Dane. The main thing about his character is that he’s embarrassed to have been on the Galaxy Quest TV show and is forced to repeat the same catch-phrase over and over again instead of moving on to more challenging and mature material. I’m fully convinced that Alan Rickman wasn’t playing Alexander Dane so much as he was just playing himself. Being a classically trained Shakespearean theatre actor forced to play in Galaxy Quest against his will, I can’t fault good casting. Outside of that, practically everyone else is bland, off, or unfunny.
Tim Allen is basically just doing his Tim Allen thing of being cast as an oblivious weirdo who goes through the formulaic arc of gaining a personality by the end so nothing about him really stands out. Tony Shalhoub as Fred Kwan is probably the weirdest of the bunch because nothing his character says sounds natural or genuine. Everything he says just sounds like he’s making up a book report in front of the whole class. Both Sam Rockwell as Guy Fleegman and Daryl Mitchell as Tommy Webber are the ones the script cruelly decided to hand the most unfunny lines to. Since Guy is the character that’s supposed to die in every episode of the show, his character is just constantly paranoid about dying in space which can get annoying and old pretty quick. Then there’s Tommy who I think they could’ve done a lot more in terms of comedy being that he started out on the show as a child actor, essentially being this universe’s version of Wil Wheaton/Wesley Crusher, but no. Instead, most of his comedic moments just involve him squealing in some way or another. Everything both of these characters say is either awkward or obnoxious.
Then there’s Sigourney Weaver as Gwen DeMarco. I know you’re probably thinking “Wow, Skye dedicated a whole paragraph to her so she must be really bad,” but honestly no. While I don’t think she’s the worst of the bunch, I just personally think that the filmmakers did her especially dirty compared to the rest of the actors. Being one of the most recognizable faces in sci-fi history for a very damn good reason, Sigourney Weaver in a comedic role like this one could really have been something hilarious if utilized well. I swear though, every time she was on set she must’ve been directed by M. Night Shyamalan or something because her performance here fits a bit too comfortably next to Mark Wahlberg from The Happening. Practically all of her lines are like a text-to-speech app feeling out human emotions for the first time, and as you probably guessed, they never get a laugh. Not only that, but nowhere in this movie can you find any sort of Alien reference. Nada. Zip. That is such a missed opportunity it’s not even funny, because it’s not funny! Spaceballs had an Alien reference in it and that didn’t even tie into anything. This movie literally has the star of that movie as one of the leads and doesn’t draw attention to it!
I’m not mad, movie…just disappointed…
Quick sidenote, Weaver actually shows more cleavage in Galaxy Quest than she does in Alien. I didn’t think it was technically possible to be more pervy than Ridley Scott.
So we made it through the character section, how’s the story? Well, about as good as you would expect. In the opening, our main protagonist Jason Nesmith is approached by a group of Thermians he doesn’t yet know are Thermians at a Galaxy Quest convention where we discover how there are actually actors in this movie trying to actively destroy it from the inside. Before you say it too, I’m perfectly aware that since the Thermians are aliens they’re not required to speak or act like humans would typically act, but these people act like what would happen if Tommy Wiseau had a lobotomy. They are quite easily the weirdest and most wrong things in the entire movie which I wouldn’t mind as much since this film is a comedy after all so it’s expected for a few things to be exaggerated for the sake of humor, but the thing is that we’re supposed to empathize with them and feel sorry for the situation they find themselves in. It’s kind of hard to take them seriously when they look, sound, and act like children desperately trying to make you laugh by any means necessary.
After that bit of awkwardness we’re blessed to have for the rest of the movie, the Thermian leader Mathesar (played by Enrico Colantoni) takes Jason to their ship where we’re officially introduced to the main threat of the film, Sarris. Jason, still not fully aware that what’s happening is real, fumbles his way through a peace negotiation and is then sent back home through one of these films’ mind-blowingly unconvincing effects.
Yeah, it’s about time to mention that the effects in this movie are pretty bad. The best one in the movie is probably the pig lizard that comes in briefly on the rock planet, mainly because it’s done practically and moves properly animal-like. Sarris and his crew are also done practically so they’re easily better than the CG effects in the film, but they aren’t crafted in a way that allows them to emote the way they should. In the end it’s kind of disappointing since all the effects artists clearly put a lot of work into them only for Sarris and his crew to move their mouths like glorified hand puppets. The same cannot be said for the CG artists. Either they were in a rush or they just didn’t care because it’s legit embarrassing how bad the CGI looks. The rock monster, the cherub aliens, the Thermians’ true forms, the transport pods, all of them look absolutely horrible. There isn’t much else to say about it, they just suck.
Marvel at the possibilities of copy-and-paste in photoshop!
With that out of the way, Jason gets back to Earth and convinces his co-stars to come with him to space and help out the Thermians. In space is when the movie gets the most formulaic in accordance with the ‘Liar Revealed’ setup and they essentially do everything you’d expect them to do. They fumble their way through flying the ship, fail at negotiating with Sarris again, and practically destroy the ship in the process of escaping from Sarris.
At this point there’s really no point in describing the story since you probably know what it is already. We partake in more comic hijinks with “comic” in heavy quotation marks as neither the writing, acting, nor editing can properly support it until the inevitable reveal that the characters are not really space heroes but are in fact actors. Mathesar’s heart is broken according to the script, and the actors are slated to be executed by throwing them out into space. They miraculously escape because the same aliens who nearly killed them in their previous encounter suddenly turned into idiots as they all go to save the Thermians from being killed.
Here is when we get to what’s, in my opinion, the best scene in the movie. After Alexander and one of the Thermians named Quellek (played by Peter Breen) rescue the rest of the trapped Thermians, Quellek is fatally shot by one of Sarris’ men. Alexander has a brief moment before Quellek’s death in which Quellek explains to him how despite never meeting him, he always considered Alexander’s character Dr. Lazarus to be his kind of spiritual father and always had a deeply rooted respect for him. I of course don’t care at all whether these characters live or die, but what I like about this scene is how it highlights the power of art to me. It shows how a piece of media stops being just a piece of media and instead becomes something more. We spend so much time with the people that we see on screen that we believe them to be real, we want them to be real, and they can inspire us in very unique ways. That’s what I like about this scene, and of course since this movie is allergic to good, this scene only lasts about a minute and a half.
Of course after this takes place the crew of the NSEA Protector are able to overcome the might of Sarris’ army and make their way back to Earth in one piece minus the stage of the convention center they’re performing at which they promptly crash into with their ship. Everyone manages to make it out okay, Sarris is killed, the cast does a curtain call to an audience of screaming fans, each of the actors are recast in a brand new Galaxy Quest series, and I question my life choices.
I’ve never been this negative for this long, so while this might seem ludicrous, I want to focus on what’s done well in this movie. Don’t worry, I’ll be brief. At the end of the day I think the idea behind this movie has the potential to work, especially considering that it has talented people working on it, but they’re just given practically nothing to work with. Outside of a few patches of good in the movie including a small fraction of the effects which actually had effort put into them and of course that one scene I mentioned before involving the nature of media’s power, everything just feels so soulless.
To me it’s not funny, it’s not engaging, it’s not well-made, it’s just wrong in so many ways. After watching it as many times as I have this week for the sake of this review, it just gets more painful whereas what a good movie is supposed to do is only get better the more times you see it. But, these are just my thoughts. I don’t mean to say these things as if my word on a movie is law, in fact as I was looking into details about this movie for this review I came across many people online proclaiming this movie to be a sci-fi classic and uproariously funny. What I’m saying is that differing opinions on movies are normal and shouldn’t be taken to heart. In case anyone reading right now is a big fan of this film and made it this far into the review, I want to thank you for considering my opinion. My main purpose for starting this review blog wasn’t just to have a platform to talk about movies myself, but also open up the floor for discussion among all of you movie fans as well. So in the end, what are your thoughts? Have you seen this movie, have you not seen it? If you have, did you like it, did you not like it? What works and what doesn’t work for you? By all means hit me up on my Contact Page of this website and maybe one day I’ll figure out how to get friggin’ comments to work on this website so there can truly be a huge group chat between all of us movie lovers!
I really would love to hear from you all. ;)
Also, If I were to give this film my own personal rating, I’d say it scores 1/5 Tribbles. Bonus points if you get that reference.
(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)
(Each of them are owned by their respective copyright holders which are not me)
(I am but a humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)
(Yet)
