“Never give up, never surrender!”

There’s been a lot of talking about fanfic lately and Sunita had the brainstorm for me to review “Galaxy Quest.” I hadn’t watched it in a couple of months so it was youtube to the rescue again. It all came back to me courtesy of 11 episodes and I recalled just how much fun it is. Gotta get my own copy now.

Seventeen years after it ended, the actors who portrayed the crew of the NSEA Protector in the TV show “Galaxy Quest” eke out a living by appearing at Cons and big box store promotions where they sign autographs, complain about their lack of acting careers and bitch about the egomaniac Jason (Tim Allen) who portrayed the captain and grabbed the best lines, the best babes and always managed to lose his shirt during the episode. At the latest gig, Jason mugs as usual until he overhears some people mocking him and followers of the show. Disheartened, he initially blows off some geek fans who want to talk technical details, as well as a group of weirdly smiling people who he thinks are dressed as aliens.

Only they aren’t just dressed as aliens….they are aliens. Thermians from another galaxy who are seeking the help of Commander Peter Quincy Taggert and his crew, they’ve learned all about them from transmissions of “historical documents.” Now they need “Taggert” as well as Gwen DeMarco/Tawny Madison (Sigourney Weaver), Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus (Alan Rickman), Fred Kwan/Tech St. Chen (Tony Shalhoub), Tommy Webber/Laredo (Daryl Mitchell) and Guy Fleegman/Crew member number six (Sam Rockwell) to help save them from the evil General Sarris (Robin Sachs) who threatens to destroy them. Can Jason convince the others that this isn’t a gag? Will they be able to replicate on board the real ship what they used to fake each week on the show? Is there a way for the dedicated fans to help Jason and Gwen through the chompers alive? And what is the mysterious Omega 13 device?

Guy Fleegman: “Did you guys ever watch the show?”

I don’t seek out fanfic – no slurs being cast, I just don’t have time with all the books on hand I need to read – so I’m probably not the best judge of whether this is fanfic, homage, spoof, or a mix…you tell me. I do know that it’s funny as hell, inventive and manages to nail not only the actors in various SF shows but also the characters they play. Using Sunita’s words, personally I think that there are changes “sufficient to make the jump from derivative to transformative.” It might use SF shows as a starting place but it quickly goes beyond that and leaps into new territory. Yes, it pokes fun at the characters, the settings and the scripts of various shows and films but it doesn’t just rely on a series of tired gags to make the movie. It’s a damned good action picture in its own right.

Alexander Dane: “There were five curtain calls. I was an actor once, damn it. Now look at me. Look at me! I won’t go out there and say that stupid line one more time.”

Casting for the movie is spot on. This is an ensemble piece, a buddy picture that requires a certain “type” in order to portray all the various stock characters – the bombastic captain, the female relegated to a meaningless job whose main purpose is to show some cleavage, the Shakespearean actor reduced to wearing foam rubber “alien” makeup, the “was then” child actor who is typecast in his role and the unnamed actor who’s cast in the “red shirt” role that ensures he’s always killed off in that episode. I especially like Tony Shalhoub as Kwan, the laid back “engineer” who’s the first to embrace where he is and what his show character is supposed to be doing. And the Thermians! Oh, I love them. They’re so cute I want to hug them hard enough that their eyes pop. Okay maybe not when they’re au natural but when they’re transformed, they’re darling. Enrico Colantoni deserves special props as Mathasar.

Jason Nesmith: “This is great. Usually it’s just cardboard walls in a garage.”

The special effects are actually fairly good. The aliens on the ships look convincing, the gizmos with lights don’t look like a Light Bright display, plus the Rock Monster and Pig-Lizard are fabulous. And even if the effects are not quite to the blockbuster level, well, the whole set up is that the Thermian ship is based on what they saw of the old TV show.

Brandon Wheeger: I just wanted to tell you that I thought a lot about what you said.
Jason Nesmith: It’s okay, now listen…
Brandon Wheeger: But I want you to know that I’m not a complete brain case, okay? I understand completely that it’s just a TV show. I know there’s no beryllium sphere…
Jason Nesmith: Hold it.
Brandon Wheeger: no digital conveyor, no ship…
Jason Nesmith: Stop for a second, stop. It’s all real.
Brandon Wheeger: Oh my God, I knew it. I knew it! I knew it!

And you gotta love how carefully the movie treats the hard core SF fans – the ones who dress up, quote entire passages of dialog, have mapped out all the duct work of the inner bowels of the ship and love to get together and dissect the minutia of the show. While real show/movie fans will get more of the references and inside jokes, “Galaxy Quest” is also enjoyable for the Average Joe. The pace is fast, the dialog is thoughtful and clever and the actors’ comedic timing is almost always perfect and there’s even a romance! But it’s also got heart and is emotionally moving – something which Mel Brooks once said is needed to lift a movie above and beyond being merely a spoof.

This is a great fun, feel good, all together now experience. It’s also a love letter to the genre that’s well aware of the cliches and in fact embraces them. It may start out with the conventions of the past 45 years but quickly moves past them and becomes its own story, as I rediscovered when I watched it again.

Fred Kwan: “Come on. Group hug.”

~Jayne

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1. Friday Film Review: Shaun of the Dead
2. Friday Film Review: While You Were Sleeping
3. Friday Film Review: Run Fatboy Run

When I looked ahead on the October calendar and saw that this last Friday would be the day before Halloween, I realized I needed some kind of horror film or monster film or, well you get the picture, to tie in with it. But since that genre isn’t something I normally watch and I wanted some romance in the film, I was a bit panicked. “What can I watch?” I muttered as I chewed a fingernail. A quick check of my Netflix queue and the day is saved. I’ll watch “Shaun of the Dead!” I said.

The plot is fairly simple. Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a 29 year old appliance salesman who’s having problems with his girlfriend Liz (Kate Ashfield) who is dissatisfied with their relationship, primarily because it revolves around going to “The Winchester,” Shaun’s favorite pub, every night. She wants something different, a nice dinner at a nice restaurant somewhere other than the pub. But Shaun screws even that up and tops it off by giving her flowers, complete with card, that he’d bought for his mother. She dumps him and Shaun and one of his flatmates, Ed (Nick Frost), head to the pub to drown Shaun’s sorrows.

The next day, something weird seems to be going on in the streets of London. At first they’re almost deserted, though Shaun barely notices anything different until he and Ed see a young woman in their small flat garden. They eventually realize she’s a zombie then retreat inside where the telly news announcer informs London that zombies are taking over the country and the only way to kill them is to remove their heads or destroy their brains. Armed with this knowledge and some weapons improvised from the garden shed, they dispatch her and another zombie. Worried about Shaun’s mother (Penelope Wilton), Liz and whether or not they’ll have to kill Phillip (Bill Nighy), Shaun’s stepfather who’s apparently been bitten by one of the undead, the two devise a plan to pick everyone up and drive to the Winchester where they think they’ll be safe.

But with the numbers of the undead flesh eating zombies growing, is there anywhere in London that’s safe?

As I said, I don’t watch horror films beyond the occasional “Hammer” film so a lot of the delicious homages to the film genre passed right over my head. But don’t worry, you don’t need to be a fan to enjoy this film. Pegg and his co-writer Edgar Wright, who also directed the film, also include a number of other homages to British TV shows and video games. Again, if you catch these it’s great but you certainly don’t need to know all the references to have fun with the movie. I had a great time picking out various actors and trying to remember where I’d seen them (It’s “Dawn” from “The Office!”).

The gore is fairly low key and generally consists of face paint and off screen deaths until the final scenes at the Winchester. Here, with Shaun and the others using the namesake rifle from over the pub bar, things get bloodier. The death of one of their number who gets dragged outside by the zombies is fairly graphic but it’s over quickly. In the storyboard “Plot Holes,” which are part of the DVD extras, we learn that another person actually survives being hauled amongst the undead.

We never actually learn how the zombie apocalypse begins and the ending features a major deus ex machina, but the film is so funny and enjoyable that I don’t care. At times, such as when Shaun is battling his way to Liz’s flat, I was literally holding my sides laughing as I screamed, “It’s like whack-a-mole!” The scene in the Winchester when several of their hearty band bludgeon the zombie pub owner to the beat of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” is hilarious.

Recently, DA has received offers of a number of zombie books for review and Jane mentioned that zombies seem to be the new vampires of UF. Hopefully they’re not like these zombies or I’d have to ask, as an aghast talk show host character does in the film, “You sleep with that?!” But if you’re looking for a great film for Halloween, do check this one out. I’m off to watch it for a second time now.

~Jayne

FTC discloser – I rented this from a movie rental service though I plan to buy my own copy.

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