Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Wow...EVERYBODY was in Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow!

Ten years after the television show was canceled, Star Trek returned as a feature film.  Ten years!  Think about it...that's like if Friends came back as a movie today!  Well, actually no...Star Trek was canceled due to low ratings, so I guess a more apt comparison would be the making of Sliders: The Movie.  Regardless, thanks to renewed popularity via syndication and the Hollywood science fiction boom in the late 70s, Star Trek: The Motion Picture was born, featuring the entire original cast.  Awesome...?

Deep in space, a mysterious energy cloud is effortlessly destroying everything in its path; while none can be seen, it is assumed that there is a ship or a being in the center of the cloud, probably because normal clouds don't fire energy beams.  The cloud is on a collision course with Earth, and it will reach the planet in two days.  The only spaceship that can intercept the cloud in time is the Enterprise, the same ship whose adventures were chronicled in the Star Trek TV show.  It's a small world, sometimes. 

Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) has, since we last saw him, been promoted to administrative duty in Starfleet Command.  However, when he learns of this threat, he more or less assigns himself as the new Captain of the Enterprise, demoting the current Captain Decker (Stephen Collins) in the process.  As Kirk reassumes his command of the ship, he sees many familiar faces --- Scottie (James Doohan) is still in the engine room, Chekov (Walter Koenig) is still an underused character that will no doubt be injured at some point in the film, Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) still acts as a glorified telephone operator, and Sulu (George Takei) still has the second most awkward speech cadence on the ship, after Kirk.  That's almost the entire old crew!  Ten years, and they all still have the exact same jobs?  Apparently, there is little to no upward mobility within the ranks of Starfleet.  Well, after a little manipulation, Kirk convinces Leonard "Bones" McCoy (DeForest Kelley) to un-retire and return as the ship's chief doctor.  And, for reasons of his own, Spock (Leonard Nimoy) returns from his home planet to help, too.  With the one new cast member, Ilia (Persis Khambatta), the team was finally complete.  So, what do they do?  Well, after repairing the Enterprise (it was in the process of being refitted with new parts), they do exactly what you think they will: they intercept the cloud and try to uncover its mysteries.  Do they succeed?  Well, this movie has ten sequels to date --- what do you think?

I have to admit, this movie sets out with a purpose (To the cloud!) and it doesn't bother with much else.  The acting is about what you would expect from this cast; they act like television actors in a small-budget show.  It's not their fault, though, since most of them were brought back for nostalgia and not their talents.  The script doesn't help them much, either.  Naturally, Shatner and Nimoy get the meatiest roles, with the most development and dialogue.  DeForest Kelley comes in a close third with dialogue, if no character development (oh, wait...he shaves off a fake beard...does that count?), and nouveau-Trekkie Stephen Collins comes in a distant fourth, because new cast members obviously can't survive --- there's seven core cast members, and dialogue cut seven ways is pretty thin.  I won't say that the performances, outside of Shatner and Nimoy, were poor.  They aren't great, but they aren't horrible.  Nimoy's Spock isn't bad either, just socially awkward.  Shatner, though, is pretty terrible and I can't understand it.  Shatner is a funny guy and, at his Kirkiest, can play a charmingly overconfident leader.  This time, it seems as though he thinks he is performing Shakespeare on the stage and that he must pause between lines for the audience to stop clapping.  I'm moderately familiar with his peculiar vocal cadence, but it is greatly exaggerated here. And, believe it or not, Stephen Collins is even worse. 

But is the acting really the point of a movie like this?  No, it is about the idea, the adventure.  And, at its core, the central idea behind this story is a pretty cool one, especially if you are somewhat familiar with NASA missions.  You don't have to be a NASAnimal (if Glee can do "Gleek"...) to appreciate or understand it, but that knowledge deepens your appreciation for the plot.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that it takes over two hours to get to that core idea.  The rest of the film features the Enterprise slowly, slowly, slowly, approaching the destruct-o-cloud.  Oh, wait, I forgot about the slow-motion wormhole scene.  That alone felt like two hours, but my concept of time was undoubtedly warped by the gravity of the hole.  The film's pace is definitely the biggest problem with this movie; sometimes, slow exterior shots of the Enterprise are coupled with grandiose bits of the soundtrack, implying a sense of accomplishment that the script rarely provides.  If the two hours leading up to the climax were filled with adventure or character development or witty dialogue --- hell, even with Kirk seducing green women --- I would have no problem.  But do you know what you see on the screen?  Several sequences where a character is staring at the Enterprise's monitor, then cut to the monitor showing the energy cloud, then cut to another character and repeat for five minutes.  There must have been at least a half-dozen separate occasions like that. 

"Captain, scans show her to be beside herself in boredom."

Even the pace wouldn't have been a deal breaker if the production values were there.  If you're going to take forever to do something on the big screen, make sure there's enough pretty pictures to keep our eyes, if not our brains, occupied.  Despite having a pretty substantial budget, though, there are a lot of annoying failures with the post-production work.  The special effects, while better than the television show, were definitely not great.  They look even worse when compared to contemporary movies, like Star Wars, Alien, or Close Encounters.  And the makeup for the alien species is particularly bad; Spock's fellow Vulcans apparently got their pointy ears from a cereal box and the Klingons must have had homemade costumes.

Better than the film's costumes.  More expensive, too, even without the mower.

What we are left with is a television-grade production with television-grade actors and a lot of boredom.  Honestly, I am surprised at how amateurish this turned out, given the already existing sci-fi universe and the usual competence of director Robert Wise.  There must have been behind the scenes problems, because there is no way this movie makes its way from pitch to the big screen with this story and pacing.  I used to think that the Star Trek curse (only the even-numbered ones are any good) was a crock, but The Motion Picture has me convinced.

Double Trouble (1992)

I just can't help myself sometimes.  Look at this movie poster; there is absolutely no chance that this is a decent movie.  The movie was clearly made to exploit the "hilarity" that comes from being twins, in the grand tradition of the Olsen twins and those obnoxious kids from Big Daddy.  But how can we tell these twins apart?  That's a good question, because audiences are really stupid.  Luckily, that is one question that the filmmakers took into account when making Double Trouble.  You see, one of the brothers dresses in suits (very common with obvious bodybuilders), while the other one wears torn jeans and...is that a belly-baring men's sweatshirt?  It most certainly is.  Well, if nothing else, at least that will make this movie unique.

Meet David Jade (David Paul), a super cop.  Not a police officer or detective, a cop.  David is apparently working on burglaries when he and his partner make a sweet bust and catch a cat burglar in the act. But...the cat burglar looks just like David!  WHA HOPPENED?!?!?  Meet Peter Jade (Peter Paul), David's good-for-nothing brother.  At first, it looks like it's just a coincidence that Peter is even in this movie; this is a movie about a cop investigating burglaries, and David already caught Peter in the act, so it's on to the next crime, right?  Right.  And that next crime is international diamond smuggling.  Sadly, David's streetwise and sassy token black partner died on the job that week, so David is in need of help.  That's when Captain O'Brien (James "Scottie" Doohan from Star Trek) assigns David a new partner: his brother!  No way!  Yes way.  No WAY!  Yes WAY!  NO WAY!  YES WAY!  I'm sorry, that exchange was supposed to have quotation marks around it, since it was lifted directly from the film.  Yes way.  Will these two complete opposites be able to stop the smuggling of these diamonds, or will they kill each other first?  Yes, to the first question, sadly no to the second.

It's not worth your time to nitpick the lack of acting or directing in this movie.  Director John Paragon has stayed away from directing, for the most part (although he did direct the Paul brothers in Twin Sitters, too, where the twins apparently baby sit another set of twins.  Genius!), so I think he learned his lesson after this.  The Paul brothers, also known as the Barbarian Brothers, are certainly not the most accomplished of actors.  I will give them credit where they're due; with their muscular physiques, they could have been in any number of bad action movies.  Instead, they opted to star in a bad action-comedy, which requires bad jokes and bad action.  It's twice the work, and that takes vision.  Or arrogance.  The recognizable actors in the cast (David Carradine, Lewis Arquette, Timothy Stack and Roddy McDowall) make the Pauls look absolutely amateurish by comparison, but against the rest of the film's supporting cast, they don't look half bad.


I would like to point out that Peter Jade's burglary equipment bears a shocking resemblance to Wolverine's Weapon X headgear.  I can't seem to find any stills of Jade from the movie, so you'll either have to take my word for it, or rent this VHS, because it never made the leap to DVD.  If you're still not sure whether you want to watch this, check out the trailer.  It's worth noting that the phrase "ready for the violence" accompanies a shot of David Paul punching a guy through a swing set.

Is this movie worth your time?  Definitely not, unless it's 3:30 AM and you're looking for something simple enough to follow when you're only half-awake.  The Paul brothers are not stuntmen, so their action scenes are usually less than impressive, and they are certainly not comedians, so their jokes fall flat more often than not.  But, when I was watching them awkwardly swing their barrel-shaped arms while chasing down bad guys, somehow not being hit by the bullets being fired at them (how do you miss these guys?), with their mullets flapping behind them, I couldn't help but smile a little bit.  The action is bad, the acting is bad, the jokes are bad, but the Pauls are actually kind of endearing.  I don't know how to explain it...I guess I equate their appeal to watching the Special Olympics --- you know that they're dealing with some sort of handicap and cannot compete on a professional level, but you root for them because they're clearly overcoming adversity.  That said, Special Olympians are an inspiration for us all, while the Paul brothers are just bad actors with a desire to share their muscles with the world.  That doesn't make up for this movie's numerous glaring flaws, but it's almost certainly better than New York Minute, and that alone has to be worth something.