Fellman's Movie Reviews

Red = Spoilers 

Galaxy Quest is a 1999 comedy Starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman. It is a parody of the show Star Trek and how devoted its fan base can be to the show. Galaxy Quest did fairly well when it first came out, winning several awards and being nominated for numerous others. It’s achieved somewhat of a cult status over time. Especially with fans of the science fiction genre who appreciate the connection with the show Star Trek and the similarities between the two. I think there’s a lot of great lines in this movie along with some really good casting that put the right people in the position to play a good role. Having Tim Allen play a cocky, self-absorbed captain across from Alan Rickman, as a trained actor is a great call if you were to ask me.  

What’s it about? The cast of the television show Galaxy Quest spend their lives going from fan convention to fan convention and making promotional appearances based on their waning celebrity. The captain, Jason Nesmith, loves the attention, his co-stars, Gwen, Alexander, Fred, and Tommy resent not only him, but the state of their careers. One day, at a fan convention, a group of people calling themselves “Thermians” approach Jason asking for help. He agrees to meet them, thinking it’s a promotional appearance. The next morning, they come to pick him up at his house, and he doesn’t understand that they are actual aliens, come to take him to an actual spaceship to negotiate with an actual alien enemy. Jason is taken aboard an exact replica of the spaceship that was on the show Galaxy Quest, The NSEA Protector, and they are taken to meet Saris, the enemy looking to exterminate the Thermians and which Jason is there to help. Not knowing that it is an actual negotiation with a real alien, and thinking that it is an acting gig, he fires on Saris, doing a lot of damage to his ship, but not destroying it completely. When Jason tries to get the Thermians to send him back to his house, they transport him through space with a transporter, and he lands on his patio, in shock of what just happened. Jason rushes to meet the other cast members to tell them what just happened, but on his way, he bumps into Brandon, a superfan of the show and they accidentally switch communicators. The crew doesn’t believe him at first, but after thinking “when is he going to ask them again?”, they decide to go with him, and follow him to the job. So, they go to the transports where Laliari is and get transported to the ship along with Guy, a redshirt from season 6 who died in episode 83. Aboard the Protector the crew learns that the Thermians have no knowledge of lying or fiction and believe that the episodes of Galaxy Quest are “historical documents” and have based their entire society off them. Sarris eventually returns, angered about being fired on, and demands the “Omega 13”. A device of unknown power held on the ship. The Protector barely escapes from Sarris through a magnetic minefield, but the ship’s power source is damaged. They have to go to a planet and find another one. They find one, but it’s protected by a group of child-like aliens that eventually turn monstrous and ferocious. The crew get the new power source aboard their shuttle, but Jason gets left behind to fight the monsters. He eventually gets saved by Fred who transports him back up to the ship. Back up on the ship they discover that Sarris has taken over and he takes the crew prisoner. He forces Jason to explain to the Thermians that the show is fake and what acting is, then Sarris activates the Protector’s self-destruct sequence and returns to his own ship. Jason soon realizes that he switched communicators with Brandon and can use his knowledge to help him solve the problems on the ship. With Brandon’s help, Jason and Gwen abort the self-destruct sequence while Alexander helps the Thermians get control of the ship back from Sarris’s forces. The crew takes the ship’s bridge back and destroys Sarris’ ship in a magnetic minefield. As they are returning to Earth, Sarris boards the bridge, disguised as Fred and shoots several of the crew members. Jason activates the Omega 13, which sends everyone back in time 13 seconds and gives Jason a chance to stop Sarris from shooting everyone, which he does. The Protector’s bridge separates from the rest of the ship and the Thermians go off into space while the crew goes into Earth’s atmosphere and land in a Galaxy Quest fan convention. Later, the show is rebooted with Guy and Laliari as new cast members.  

What’s good? Aside from some great performances, it’s a wonderful script. The special effects are top notch. And it’s really kind of meta how its a movie about a species of people based on a show. 

What’s bad? I don’t see a whole lot of bad about this movie. I like everything about it. I laugh most of the time every time I watch it.  

The acting? Everybody in this movie does a great job. Even the Thermians are doing a good job in their weird little “Thermian” way. Both Justin Long and Rainn Wilson have their film debut in this movie.  

The effects? I don’t know if it’s an ILM movie or not, but the effects are pretty good not to be. And besides, what big budget movie isn’t these days? Anything worth paying for is worth doing right, right? 

How many times has Alexander heard somebody say that line? You gotta figure, spending all of your time going to fan conventions, having every single one of your fans come up to you and do the same pose and say the exact same line over and over again. It must get awfully frustrating. I mean, I can see how Alexander would be on his last edge of hearing that line. 

Why does Alexander still have the head thing on? Why is he still wearing that head thing when he gets home? Why didn’t he take it off when he got in the door? You’d think he would want to get that thing off as soon as possible if he’s so unapproving of it. 

Jason passes out on the floor. Jason gets wasted and passes out on the floor. Wasted to the point that he fell asleep without his pants on. What was he doing, by himself, with no pants on, on the floor? He was drunk, so you don’t really want to know anyway.  

He thinks they’re joking. Jason thinks the Thermians are joking when they show up to his house to pick him up to take him back to their ship. Or, he thinks it’s an acting gig. For whatever reason, he doesn’t believe that it’s real, and he goes up to the ship and acts like it’s all pretend. 

Does it just shoot a single person through a black hole? Does the transporter thing just fire a single person through a black hole? I mean, that can’t be safe. From what I understand, black holes are extremely dangerous.  

They’re all in shock when the space octopuses come at them. The crew come out of their transporters in shock and then the space octopuses start coming at them with their power tools and everything, poking things at them and whatnot. It’s really a scary situation. 

Fred isn’t even bothered. Fred isn’t bothered in the least when he comes out of the transport pod as opposed to everybody else who is in complete shock from what they just witnessed.  

Why would gum help? Why exactly would gum help with the aftershock of traveling through space in a transport pod? Does the chewing process calm your nerves or something? Is there something about the gum that relieves the tension? 

Organ fabrication chamber? Can they just grow organs? Is that what that means? There’s no other way to interpret that sequence of words. Unless they meant they were putting together pipe organs. But somehow, I don’t think they were… 

Laredo has no idea what he’s doing. Despite the controls being modeled after Tommy’s motions on the show, Tommy has absolutely no idea what he’s doing when it comes to flying the ship. He’s about as knowledgeable as any of the Thermians there watching him.  

Where did Fred get those crackers? When they’re in the shuttle going down to the planet to get the berrylium sphere, Fred’s got some crackers and cheese that he’s snacking on. Where did he get those from? He just found some crackers somewhere? Were they on the shuttle? 

Is there air? Guy makes a good point. They didn’t even analyze the planet for anything. You can’t always assume everything is the way it is on Earth. Because other planets are clearly not Earth. That’s why they’re dangerous.  

Guy knows what the show’s about. Guy predicts the little kid creatures are going to get mean, and they’re going to get ugly, and then they do. Everything the rest of the crew wanted to do was exactly what got someone killed on the show. It took a redshirt to know what not to do in situations like that. 

It turned inside out and exploded. When Fred transported the piglizard the first time and it turned inside out and exploded, he didn’t really know what he was doing. He was just getting a feel for the machine. And you could cut him a little slack for being nervous seeing as he just found out that they were in space for real with an actual space pirate. It’s understandable.  

Rudimentary lathe. One of my favorite lines in the entire movie is when Jason is trying to fight the giant rock monster and Guy says, “can you try to form some sort of a rudimentary lathe…?” I don’t know why I find that so funny, but it just seems like a brilliant piece of comedy to me.  

What is the giant eye with tentacles? In the one episode of Galaxy Quest that they show, the ship is flying past this giant eye with tentacles coming off of it. You just have to wonder: what the hell is that thing? Just a giant eyeball with tentacles coming off of it? What purpose could that possibly serve? 

Why do they dub over “fuck”? It turns out to save the PG-13 rating they had to edit out “fuck” and dub over it with “screw”. However, Sigourney Weaver was strongly opposed to this so when they recorded the scene, she mouthed the word “fuck” as articulately as she could so that everybody knew what she was saying even if they dubbed it. 

How do they get back to the minefield? How did they get back to the minefield where they escaped Sarris from the first time? Were they just circling around and just happened by it? It seems awfully fortuitous that they just happened to be right next to it. Either that or there’s just magnetic minefields all over the place? What are these minefields doing everywhere…? 

I don’t think they can see Justin Long at that speed. Coming in awfully hot to be able to see Brandon and his roman candles from their ship, but I’m not a spaceship pilot, so what do I know about it? 

Some fans shoot Sarris with Nerf guns when he shows up. When the crew shows up and gets out of the shuttle onto the stage and then Sarris gets out after them, some fans shoot him with nerf guns because they think it’s part of the show and it’s all special effects when it’s all real and none of them know it.  

So, yeah. Go and see Galaxy Quest. It’s the funniest historical document you’ll see about this sector for a long time. Never give up, never surrender. And as always, keep on watching, with a smile on your face…