My Own Better Late Than Never

This weekend, I finally got around to seeing Galaxy Quest.

I had avoided the movie when it first came out because it looks like the kind of comedy I generally don’t like. One that mocks easy targets and contains performances that are all attitude over characterization. Usually, these movies are too broad and silly and scattershot. I need my comedies with an element of sadness – and I don’t mean some manufactured moment where the lead mopes to a tinkling piano. I mean real pathos. I need my comedies to have a focused sense of satire with targets worthy of ridicule (like oppressive ideals, not people). I need some misanthropy in my humor. I am not a fan of fart jokes and pratfalls and pop culture shout outs. I can't sit through comedies about dim-witted man-children who flail desperately and shout the audience into comic submission. So the idea of a movie that makes fun of sci-fi fans irked me. Especially with Tim Allen in the lead. He just seems drawn to broad, condescending comedies with tacked on, sugary lessons to be learned. Oh, how I hate half-assed comedies that teach me lessons. But then again, this movie also has Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Justin Long and Sam Rockwell – as well as bit parts by Enrico Calantoni and Rainn Wilson.

It often comes up – how much I like Sam Rockwell. I consider him a surrogate into many a film. He's far more extroverted than I am, but there's something about his self-deprecating, excitable dry wit. His ability to deflate on cue. His misleading smirk. From Confessions of a Dangerous Mind to Lawn Dogs to Joshua to Snow Angels, he never lets me down - even when the movie itself does. Inevitably, a friend of mine always brings up Galaxy Quest as a movie of his I should see. And now that I have, I finally understand what the hell she’s talking about every time she mentions “the chomper scene” in a movie.

I enjoyed Galaxy Quest. I didn’t love it, but I liked it. It's harmless and good spirited and pleasant enough. There's nothing to get upset about or offended at. Even the the most cynical, angry characters are likable and huggable. I’ve never been to a sci-fi convention. I’ve never been a huge fan of Star Trek (though I watched plenty of TNG in High School). I don’t feel as if any of the jokes were lost on me, but I couldn’t appreciate them the way someone who is immersed in that world might. I laughed out loud maybe a dozen times, which counts it as a success in my book. The first laugh came about fifteen minutes in when the alien girl makes that unearthly sound without her translator. But I was not in a constant state of giggliness as I am with some movies that win me over in the first few minutes. 

The direction was bland and half-assed and serviceable at best. There was the usual over-reliance on computer effects (although a welcome number of aliens were created with costumes and make-up), and a lackadaisical plotting that doesn't focus nearly enough on character. What saves the movie is the universally excellent performances. Sam Rockwell’s descent from gee-whiz amazement to inconsolable panic. Alan Rickman’s stock-in-trade contempt oozing from every line (“By Grabthar's hammer . . . what a savings.”). Sigourney Weaver’s sexy and cool cynicism (I especially loved the moment when she gives a low key “Hold please,” as the creature beamed up twists inside-out and explodes.). Even Enrico Colantoni's cartoonish, trotting alien was enjoyable. Only Tim Allen seems to be doing his same ole schtick - less an impression of Shatner than a less intolerable version of himself - humbled only briefly by an overheard conversation between two holier-than-thou teens. Thankfully, though, he didn't have any sentimental moment of preachy self-awareness to drag the movie into the pits of the usual moral-affirming crowd-pleaser. 

But what I really appreciated was the sense of danger. Real stakes with real consequences. The characters must rise up to save an entire civilization. There isn't a great deal of tension, but what little there is is brilliantly undercut in one moment with Justin Long's being forced to take out the trash by his mother at the worst possible time. The movie even shows death and torture (in the kindest, gentlest ways possible). And the moment that truly surprised me was near the end when many of the characters are killed in a Peckinpah-lite slow-mo montage. Comedies generally don't go there, and the director of this movie did his best to keep the darkness at arms length and make sure the audience never feels threatened - but it's there. If only this darkness had been introduced earlier in the movie, I would have been sucked in from the beginning.

With a director more willing to explore the danger in the story and having a better knack for composition, this movie could have been great. Here the director (who directed some other movies I haven't seen) just stays out of the way of the observant script and unusually smart performances.

And for the record, the "chomper scene" refers to a moment (usually in sci-fi movies) when the characters encounter a moment of manufactured danger that makes little to no logical sense and serves only to add some fake suspense. A recent example would be in the reboot of Star Trek when the characters are beamed into the alien ship and one ends up trapped in a bizarre plumbing system and must be rescued. Galaxy Quest does an admirable job of commenting on the absurdities in the genre without seeming above them. All in all, a fun movie that didn't bowl me over. 

My favorite throw-away comic moment:

• “But you live with your mother.” [Walks away.]