Star Trek: Insurrection (1998)
Directed by Jonathan Frakes

I'm not a Trekkie. But I do like Star Trek. I had heard very little about Star Trek: Insurrection (the 9th movie in the series) because I had avoided all media exposure to it so as not to spoil anything (as the media tend to do). I did this for Star Trek: First Contact and although I was glad the movie was all new to me, I was a little disappointed in it (apparently this is contrary to conventional Trekkie opinion). Well, I got pretty much the same reaction from the latest film, but more so … fewer expectations, but more disappointment.

The entire movie plays out like a well-made episode of the TV show. The Enterprise crew gets together again and has to go to some planet to deal with some unadvanced people dressed in tunics. Listen, when you make a Star Trek movie, it has to have some kind of importance to it. The last one had the Borg, and they were threatening the existence of the Federation. The one before that had both Captains Kirk and Picard in it (and Kirk died!). But in this one, all you get is a story that seems like it was a leftover from the TV show. The story has no importance. There's a slight conspiracy Picard uncovers involving the Federation, but not the entire Federation, so why should we even care? There's no Borg, no Cardassians, none of that weird Deep Space Nine crap that I hear about now and again. They reference that important stuff in the movie, but never deal with it.

What they do deal with is the aforementioned tunic people who live on a planet that is like a gigantic Fountain of Youth. A Federation admiral teams with typical Star-Trek-looking aliens led by F. Murray Abraham (whose inclusion was the biggest shock of the movie for me) to move the tunics off the planet so they can harvest the youth-giving radiation. Picard fights for the right for the people not to be relocated and thus you have your conflict. Eventually you learn more about the tunic people and the planet and the aliens but it's not really that exciting. And F. Murray Abraham shrieks like a girl like three times!

Insurrection is laden with quips and one-liners that the Trekkies in the audience laughed way too hard at. That's not really a bad thing, but I should have gone in a week or so when those nerds had seen it four or five times already and the humor had lost its luster.

The new Enterprise looks kind of cool. They might have used it in the last movie, but I can't remember. There weren't nearly enough spaceships and chase scenes in the movie with photon torpedoes and the like, so you don't get to enjoy the new Enterprise all that much anyway. The special effects that were in the movie were nice, though.

Thankfully, the movie was short. It lasted only 90 minutes or so, which was way shorter than I expected. Given the softness of the film, though, I forgive it.

I don't know what the hell the creators were thinking when they put this movie out. They should have released it as a "lost episode" of the TV show or something rather than hype it up and release it in theaters. I'm still waiting for a Star Trek II-caliber film to come out, but I'll have to wait at least another couple of years before they churn out another movie.

I am glad, though, that there was no one in the theater dressed as a Klingon for this one.

Review by Albert Stephanides