Galaxy Quest (Dreamworks)
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Official Amazon/Dreamworks website
Cast: Tim Allen (Jason Nesmith) / Sigourney Weaver (Gwen DeMarco) / Alan Rickman (Alexander Dane) / Tony Shalhoub (Fred Kwan) / Sam Rockwell (Guy Fleegman/Crewman #6/Security Chief Vic "The Roc") /
Daryl Mitchell (Tommy Webber) / Enrico Colantoni (Mathesar) / Robin Sachs (Sarris) / Patrick Breen (Quellek) / Missi Pyle (Laliari) / Jeremy Howard (Kyle)
Production: Directed by Dean Parisot / Writing credits (WGA) David Howard (VI) (story)
David Howard (VI)

Tim Allen needs more power. That's not unusual, but this time it's from the warp core of a starship. Sigourney Weaver is blonde, busty and bimbettish, and niether of them are can keep their shirts from getting torn off. I fell in love with Missi Pyle, a third string alien with a crush on the Chief Engineer (Tony Shalhoub), and enjoyed this Trek Tribute immensely.

Hot on the heels of Free Enterprise, Shatner's second most lethal assault on Trekdom as a way of life, exceeded only by the famous SNL; "Get a life!" skit, Galaxy Quest boldly goes where no one has gone before, except in endless reruns.

Courageous Crew:Tim Allen, Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver	Cheerful Aliens: Missi Pyle, Patrick Breen(?), Enrico Colantoni, Jed Rees(?)

Tapped for an unusual gig while entertaining the legions of Quest fans at a con, Tim Allen and the cast of the defunct Trek lookalike Galaxy Quest find themselves pretending to be the crew they were on TV. It seems that survivors of a galactic purge built a replica of the starship USS Protector (as seen on TV episodes beamed into space) to defeat a galactic baddie. Discovering that defeating real baddies was much harder than it looked, they beamed up the original crew to do the job.

In the classic, "we're smart enough to travel a zillion light years, but too lame to understand humans" the aliens really resist the idea that Tim and Cast aren't real heroes, and since they need help so bad and the cast is stuck there (being under attack, the transport thingy won't work), Allen and company buckle down and try to remember their lines. One of the more useful ideas was that since the ship was built to do exactly what it did in the TV show, all the cast has to do is remember how they pretended to work it and it will respond. You gotta believe.

Sure it's reality light, but it's funny and fun and so help me...I loved it.

Not only does the cast get pulled in, but so does fandom in a tribute to the depth of knowledge that fans have amassed about the technical side of Trek. Fandom is well treated in this movie, actually - it's poked a bit of fun at, but you never feel it's being dissed. We're good kids, evidentally, and you never know when all that information is going to come in handy.

Tim Allen plays a Shatner/Allen/Buzz LightYear amalgam, which isn't much of a stretch for him, but he does it with style.

Sigourney Weaver, on the other hand, plays one of the most unusual roles of her career, as the buxom Gwen DeMarco. Gone is the gaunt and serious Ripley, welcome the friendly weather girl looks of Gwen. Was it hard to be a blonde? "No, says Weaver, I just had to dumb myself down and forget how to act. People were really friendly to me though". There's a message here somewhere.

See it on the big screen if you can, rent it when it comes out. Never Surrender.