Odd-Numbered Curse A-Go-Go.
This movie works on so many levels! There are elements of that Kevin Costner-meets-Lakota movie ("Star Trek 9: Dances with Llamas"), a whiff of Pennsylvania Dutch chic ("Star Trek 9: Dances with Amish"), all suffused with old-fashioned Vermont hippie-commune idealism (well, at least before the sellout). It's an amalgam of all these, but set in northern California. Yes, the crew of the Enterprise-E, after long voyages of discovery and galactic adventure, has found a bunch of technologically advanced people who enjoy living their immortal lives as dirt farmers, and have been doing so for centuries.
Yup. Don't let the warmly lit, Italian-rural-style dining fool you (dining scenes themselves taken from the "American|Brit in Villa For Summer" genre, therefore "Star Trek 9: A Starship With A View"). Those poeple, while they have not yet evolved into pure energy, know all about warp technology, positronic brains and quilt-making. Unfortunately, they wrote down their nuclear-weapons technology on a napkin and lost it, so when it came time to "kick Son'a ass", all they have are sticks with rusty nails in them. We'd otherwise have a much shorter film, giving back to us ninety minutes of lives. We could have used those extra ninety minutes to contemplate the benefits of a simpler, rustic life. I suppose that in taking this opportunity for contemplation away from us and instead subjecting us to this movie, the filmmakers have betrayed their own vision of paradise.
I suppose I should explain why nuclear weapons would have been needed. Bad guys, led by F. Murray Abraham (oh, how far he's fallen: I saw "Amadeus" recently on DVD, and what a wonderful Salieri he was. Now, he's simply the pathetic New Face of Evil.) in cahoots with the Federation, have decided to steal the secret of Amish immortality. They come up with this wacky plan involving holodecks and a trail of breadcrumbs to trick the Amish to their reservation. The offer of casino rights apparently wasn't contemplated. Picard, through a series of humorous accidents and chance encounters, discovers the wacky plan and sets out to foil it. He also gets laid in the process. (Oh, we now have proof that Picard was born bald (well, you know what I mean): bathed in age-reversing metaphasic radiation, his scalp budges not an inch). Of course, the Enterprise crew is successful, the rustic paradise is saved, and Disney acquires rights to build a theme park on the other side of the planet, Bed-and-Breakfast Land.
The other amusing tidbits: you can fly the Enterprise with a pop-up joystick on the bridge. This ain't no fancy Thrustmaster-type joystick. It's one of the nasty ones that come with your computer if you buy it at Bob's Bait and PC Shack, the ones that get your X-Wing creamed by those TIE fighters on Mission 4. Riker got to use the joystick (and had the bubblebath scene with Troi) 'cause he's the director. I have the impression that Riker was as screwed as the hypothetical X-Wing player (not me, I suck at those games), because the "fire phasers" trigger wasn't working. If it did, it would have saved many more minutes of movie.
There are actually lines of dialog that invoke Gilbert and Sullivan in what would ordinarily be a tense, bad special effects-laden situation. There are other lines of dialog that refer to breast size. Boggle.
If I were the actors on Deep Space 9 or Voyager, I'd be pissed at the whole movie-making apparatus over at Paramount. To think, the studio bigwigs may flush the franchise down the crapper before they get their turn at making movies.
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