Galaxy Quest
For four years, the courageous crew of the NSEA protector - "Commander Peter Quincy Taggart" (Tim Allen), "Lt. Tawny Madison (Sigourney Weaver) and "Dr.Lazarus" (Alan Rickman) - set off on a thrilling and often dangerous mission in space...and then their series was cancelled! Now, twenty years later, aliens under attack have mistaken the Galaxy Quest television transmissions for "historical documents" and beam up the crew of has-been actors to save the universe. With no script, no director and no clue, the actors must turn in the performances of their lives.
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- Cast:
- Tim Allen , Sigourney Weaver , Alan Rickman , Tony Shalhoub , Sam Rockwell , Daryl Mitchell , Enrico Colantoni
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Reviews
Best movie of this year hands down!
the audience applauded
Simply Perfect
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
This is the kind of films that are missing today. Family oriented yet smart and hugely entertaining. Galaxy Quest is about a cast of a space opera television series- long past their prime, who get abducted by aliens who happen to be a huge fan of their show. Revealing anything else would be spoiling the fun but this is a must watch for fans who love anything science fiction or comedy. Also look at that star cast. 8/10 (Sweet Sigourney never looked hotter; Allen and the tragically departed Rickman never funnier).
If Mars Attacks & My Favorite Martian (1999) have taught us anythings its that it takes more than a likable cast to make a good sci-fi comedy movie.It's a movie that really doesn't fit into any of its genres. Too unfocused and goofy for sci-fi, too cheesy for adventure, and not funny enough to be a decent comedy. It's like taking 3 ingredients you really like and putting them into a blender, all you get in the end is some weird slop mix.The plot is unoriginal, its the Three Amigos in space.The acting its overall pretty bad. It's like the actors couldn't decide which way to go with their characters so they just resorted to acting like themselves. Not ridiculous enough to be slapstick funny nor serious enough to be good satire.Tim Allens character is not some entertaining spoof of Kirk, its just Tim Allen acting like Tim Allen. He starts off as a jerk who doesn't take things seriously, upsets those around him, comes to a realization that others don't believe and then has to convince others what has happened and grows as a person. What do you know, its the exact same character he played in The Santa Clause. Allen Rickman again just plays Allen Rickman. Sigourney Weavers character was a joke that wasn't funny. Like we're supposed to laugh at how useless she is when she adds nothing to the story. Tony Shalhoub acts like his character had a lobotomy, appearing brain dead stupid to the point of being obnoxious. Daryl Mitchell plays the overly excitable black man trope. The most entertaining character was unexpectedly Sam Rockwell as Guy. Best jokes and the most distinct acting among the bunch.Without going into spoiler details, the ending was so incredibly cheesy that even 1960s sci-fi would cringe. The ending suffers the same fate as the acting, not serious enough to be good satire nor humorous enough to be funny on its own. It's just bad.Highlights of the film are the really peculiar Thermians and the practical effects for them, Sarris & the Pig creature.
We live now in an age of extreme irony, where the jokes in a comedy like this one have to reference other films, TV shows and so on... 1999 gave us at least 3 Hollywood films that made this sort of self- reference device that actually (in this case literally) creates the film:Bowfinger has the most cinematic approach, because the story is about the creation of a film, and many of the jokes ARE the making of that film. It's a film as the making of another film.Mystery Men has the best sets, and the references have to do with the performances, a sort of an anti-superhero film where each goofy super-hero tackles his own typical performance, thus creating the joke and the comment on it.This one has actually the most clever approach in terms of writing, although it is the less successful for me in terms of comedy.The fun is that they reference Star Trek obviously, which a staple of pop culture, so the audiences can immediately relate. And than they create a little tale of stories creating each other:-everything is a performances, all actors play actores playing characters, and are actually pretty much all the time in character, starting from the very beginning, when they are at a fan convention, in character (the film ends the same way, thus framing the whole thing as a performance);-actors are allowed to spoof some part of their own public persona: so Weaver spoofs Ripley, Allen spoofs Buzz Lightyear, Alan Rickman his "shakespearean actor doing Hollywood stuff" (incidentally, i think this is his first Snape...)...-the most clever self-reference is how they handle the world of the aliens: the aliens come to earth to pick up our heroes because they caught their cheesy TV show on space and took it for real. Before they picked them up, they actually built their world and technology according to what the show on earth showed. So the reality of the aliens imitated the art of the earthlings who than go to the alien world first as actors performing a role, and eventually stop acting and become the roles they first performed. In between, a lot jokes about acting as lying are dropped, and actually the difference between the bad space guys and the good ones is that the bad guys understand the concept of lying. So in order to save the day, our heroes have to turn bad (lying...) acting into believable one. They have to "live" their roles, in other words, they have to stop lying.This is good stuff in a popcorn package. I'm guessing that things like Deadpool indicate that we are moving on, and that we already went too far in terms of mapping our stories completely (and exclusively) to the reference of themselves. But i think the age we are (maybe) closing now started somewhere in the 90's. IMO, if you want the best of it, you have to check "Tropic Thunder" or "Saneamento Básico" if you're not afraid to leave Hollywood and/or if you want to have clever writing AND a film that matters, all in one.
I will just fuc* the guys who rated this movie down to 7.3.2 decades after the 6 actors who played in a star trek like TV series, who never became successful later, keep doing comicon like appearances and make a living. They hate each other and hate the cheezy dialogues they have to repeat again and again.Then something really really crazy happens (I don't want to spoil your surprise), and they have a fantastic adventure.If nothing else, you can see this movie just to see Sigourney Weaver playing a comedy role. Somehow she is more interesting than Algelina Jolie and all the current young girls.Just go see it - YOU WON'T BE DISAPPOINTED - at the very least.