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Before he struck it big with Disney, Pixar and The Incredibles, director Brad Bird helmed this minor delight of a movie for Warner Bros. which, sadly, almost nobody ever saw when it first came out. A well-deserved cult status followed its release on home video, however, paving the way for its director to move on to bigger and, although it’s difficult to believe, even better efforts than this.
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Original Star Trek cast member George Takei has allegedly said that Galaxy Quest is more true to the spirit of the TV show than any of the other theatrical movies based on the 60s TV series. While I wouldn’t hold it up against Wrath of Khan, this affectionate 1999 spoof is definitely a better Trek film than any of the odd-numbered entries in the franchise.
Galaxy Quest fits a spot-on satire of virtually the entire Trek phenomenon, from the show itself to the actors and the fans, into a tight 102-minute running time. The designs of the ships, the costumes and the sets veers just far enough from the source material for the filmmakers to avoid being eaten alive by a horde of ravenous Paramount lawyers.
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Having seen the original Star Wars films more times than I can count (and more times than any adult cares to admit), I so wanted to love this movie. I was mentally prepared to be swept back into a world I haven’t seen anew since I was 17. With the imagination behind the first trilogy re-invigorated by a long rest, and equipped with technology not even imagined in 1977, I expected an unequaled triumph of the imagination.
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Rule #1 in telling a good ghost story: the less you show of the ghost, the better. Robert Wise understood that in 1963, Jan de Bont ignores it in 1999.
For the first half of this new adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s classic novel, the story follows the book and the original movie with reasonable fidelity, and thus for the first hour, The Haunting is reasonably effective and spooky. The ghostly manifestations are done with sound and suggestion, not ham-handed visuals. After that, however, the special effects take over and the film loses all narrative cohesion.