The new “Star Trek” pre-sequel is an enjoyable, exciting, rambunctious, loud, abrasive, paper-thin, canon-destroying ride.  Like a banana cream pie that has been in the works for years, this confection of a film looks great, tastes great and then causes cancer.

The film shows the early years of Kirk and Spock and why they were such tormented souls (Kirk loses his father and so is angry, rebellious, etc.; Spock is half-Vulcan, half-human, making him rejected by all, so is angry, rebellious, etc. – making them prime characters for any movie featuring a cocky Tom Cruise).  It then shows how the legendary crew of the original USS Enterprise came to be.  Knowing how Star Fleet works is a revelation: Scotty becomes head of engineering, believe it or not, by beaming aboard half way through the film.  Kirk becomes captain solely because there is no third in command.  Uhuru becomes communications officer because – wait for it – she wants to be close to Spock.

Fans of the show know that Uhura is a Swahili word that means ‘freedom’.  In this movie, it also means ‘undressing’, ‘cocktease’ and ‘eye candy.’  Perhaps the most shocking new definition of Uhuru is ‘the one main character who is not allowed to have a Big Moment’.  Every male character – Kirk, Spock, Scotty, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov – has a Big Moment in the film; Uhura’s Big Moment is regulated to adding a bit of information (one line) to one of Kirk’s numerous Big Moments. 

I can’t really give the filmmakers too much grief for reducing one character to eye candy – they have a lot of ground to cover in a finite amount of time.  However, whereas 1960s ‘Star Trek’ made the bridge a picture of the perfect future, with Americans, Africans, Russians, Scots, the Japanese and out-worlders working together in harmony, 2009 effectively turns diversity into little more than comic relief.  Chekov’s accent causes laughs galore when the computer doesn’t recognize his voice.  Scotty is little more than a court jester.  And Uhura, of course, shows concern on cue, cuz that’s what women do, even to the point of leaving her post to cuddle with Spock in the transporter room.  It’s Star Trek for a culture that thrives on Attention Deficit Disorder as much as it champions its cure.  It’s Star Trek for Dummies.

And therein lies my real problem with ‘Star Trek’: as the film depicts how Kirk becomes captain and every other main character achieves his position in preparation for the first five-year voyage (shown as the first TV series in the 1960s), we realize that the only reason these characters come together is because of an (inadvertent) invasion of Romulans from the future which has disrupted the timeline.  The Romulans are responsible for Kirk’s father’s death and Spock’s mother’s death – and indeed the destruction of Vulcan (Spock’s home planet, which is visited in at least two series and the films).   They are responsible for so much change in the ‘past’ that the Enterprise crew’s future (i.e., four of the five television shows and ten out of ten of the movies) didn’t happen.   Rebooting a franchise is all well and good, but if you rebooted your computer and everything you had on it wasn't there anymore, you might be a little grumpy.

On the upside, the casting is superb (with the exceptions of Winona Ryder as Spock’s mom – she looks gaunt and not at all like a younger Jane Wyman – and Anton Yelchin’s overly affected Chekov), the action is non-stop and armrest-grabbing intense, and the special effects are exceptional (look out for the thousand lens flares!).  My girlfriend, a non-Trekkie, enjoyed it thoroughly.  It may be best to judge this book by its cover only, as any actual analysis might render your mind a black hole.