Turn on TV most nights and there’s some Star Trek spin-off boldly heading off somewhere. In it are actors you’ve never seen before and will possibly never see in anything else again. As coloured latex hangs off various bits of various faces they strike heroic poses and over-earnestly deliver lines from rehashes of scenarios that were tired in the Sixties. Galaxy Quest knows those shows and those actors. It follows a past-it sci-fi cast as they do the convention circuit, signing books for the geeks they despise, bickering among themselves, boring anyone who’ll listen with stories of antique Shakespearean glory. Then, gasp, a bunch of real aliens turn up, expecting not crummy autographs, but real heroes to save their planet. At which point Galaxy Quest takes off, boldly going with its perfect cast where Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs should have gone before. As for the cast, Tim Allen could be William Shatner’s brother, no one does supreme boredom like Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver shows that even an Alien star can laugh at her legacy. Zapping satirical targets with photon-torpedo accuracy and eventually hitting warp speed with jump-out-of-chair heroics, this is a geniunely funny sci-fi spoof and a great adventure too. These days that’s harder to find than William Shatner’s hairline.
Galaxy Quest – at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2013
