Shatner wrote this movie. End of review.
Not really. Unfornately for all of us, there is a lot more to be said.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier has to be one of the worst franchise movies ever made. How this even made it past the concept phase is a mystery to all. The dialogue is terrible, the plot is hilariously stupid, and the acting from every one of these people is some of the worst I've ever seen. There is nothing redeeming about this movie. I watched it again a few years ago, thinking it couldn't possibly be as bad as I had remembered. Guess what? It totally was. It's boring, idiotic, and poorly executed - in short, one of the most questionable decisions that Paramount Pictures has ever made.
This two-hour suckfest beings with an ugly, toothless guy out in the middle of the desert manually drilling for... rocks, apparently. All of a sudden, our of the blue, a mystery man comes riding in on a horse, and speaks all mystically about destiny and the meaning of life. He then asks that the ugly driller "share his pain, and gain strength from the sharing," which the ungly driller does. Then he gets down on his knees and cries, and apparently he has been Saved by the power of God or something. Just five mintes in, you can already tell it's going to be a long movie.
The next thing we see is a montage of Shatner climbing the sheer rock face of El Capitan alone with no ropes. This in and of itself sets the tone for the entire rest of the experience. Shatner's hubris in assuming his character could do something like this is match only by his ineptitude at writing beyond it, as he fully demonstrates in the scenes to come. As the credits finish, good ol' Spock flies up wearing a pair of - get this - rocket boots, and greets the Captain. Shatner is understandably annoyed at being visisted by a flying Vulcan while he's clinging for his life to a perfect 90-degree cliff face. Long story short, he falls off, and Spock uses the boots to rescue him just feet away from his death. Yay, sort of.
Later we sit in as our valiant heroes, Shatner, Spock and Dr. McCoy roast marshmallows around a campfire, make fun of how little Spock knows about camping and stuff, and engage in dialogue that's entirely out of character for all three of them. This is especially true of the good Doctor, who turns from saracstic to outright asshole in about three seconds, calling Spock out about every little thing he does wrong. None of it fits, and viewers have to wonder how these people ever became friends if this is what they're really like. Thankfully, this scene relegates Shatner to the minir role of telling the two others to shut up over and over again until they finally do it.
Man, I'm already tired of recapping this movie. The rest of the plot goes like this: The mystery man, who lives on the official "Planet of Peace" has grabbed a bunch of cultists and taken over the only city. The ambassador there calls for help and even though the brand spanking new Enterprise is in a total state of disrepair, they are... wait for it... the only ship close enough to go help. As it turns out, going to help is a bad idea because the Ambassador is a cultist too, and it was all an elaborate plot to steal a ship and fly to the center of the galaxy, because apparently that's where God lives.
Are you beginning to see why this movie is so bad?
I'm going to keep saying it, and it's true: There is nothing good about this movie. The way Shatner write all the characters, no one is who they used to be. He obviously has no understanding of effective dialogue and character development, and as a result all the people in this movie might as well be from another series altogether. If we're to believe Shatner's interpretation of events, the characters have experienced the following life-altering personality changes since the end of The Voayge Home: Spock is dumber and less understanding of his human companions, McCoy is an asshole drunk, Scotty is just a bumbling space technician, Scotty and Uhura are having an affair, Uhura has become an anti-feminist skank, Sulu and Chekov are both mindless slaves, and Shatner is smarter than all of them combined. Makes sense, right? No. Nothing works. None of the character dynamics that have held the series together even have a cameo in this movie. Nobody interacts like you expect them to, nobody reacts like you want them to, and what they actually wind up doing is confusing and painful to watch. There is conflict for the sake of conflict, despite all the narrative precedents against it. There are situations for the sake of comedy, despite the dual flaws of being unfunny and unbelievable. This is like the Star Wars Christmas Special of the Star Trek movies.
Not only does Shatner butcher the characters and situations, but the story itself is ridiculous. The idea that an insane ideologue could convert an entire ship's crew with a well-stated PA speech is absurd, as is the idea that they're flying to the center of the galaxy to find God. Not only that, but the progression of events that gets them there is amazingly over-the-top. There's a good forty-five minutes of botched covert-ops elements that feel completely out of place given what movie we're watching. Lacking any situations with the gravity of any of Shatner's "risky maneuvers" for which the character has become famous, the movie takes scenes that would normally be nothing less than a minor setback and treats them like life-and-death situations. Things like, God forbid, landing a shuttle without automatic braking systems are given dranw-out, "suspenseful" sequences in hopes of re-creating some past adventures. Unfortunately, the best they can hope for is an accident report and some Tylenol, because the results are nothing to write home about.
If anyone was hoping for a semi-logical claimax to this cinematic catastrophe, I've got some bad news for you sunshine: Pink isn't well, he stayed back at the hotel. We've been sent along as a... oh, Shit, I think I just fell asleep while I was writng this. That's what movies like this one can do to even a battle-hardened reviewer such as myself. The end of The Final Frontier is, if you can believe it, worse than the events that bring us to that point. For reasons that escape me, Shatner and company ride along with Alien Charles Manson to the surface of the planet in the middle of the galaxy where God lives. You know the one, right? When they arrive it looks distinctly like Arizona, only more barren. They walk around with the help of a magic invisible compass that leads them to a circle of stones. They all look confused when suddenly Alien Charles Manson bellows, "WE HAVE TRAVELLED FAR!" Aaaaaaand nothing happens. He then tacks on in a meek little voice, "By Starship," and all of a sudden a bunch of giant stone pillars appear, and the Almighty God appears before them. Sort of. It turns out that "God" is actually "An omniscient alien who wants to steal a ship and escape from his prison." He attacks a couple of people, and his Godliness is questioned, and then Shatner fights with him... and wins. That's right: Shatner fights with an omniscient alien and wins.
Then they all fly home.
Do I really need to say anything else? There is nothing good about this movie. It is bad in every way it is possible for a movie to be bad, especially a franchise movie. It's just so.... ugggghh, I can't even put it into words. This is a horrible, horrbile movie.
The Verdict: One small Alp (a). And I don't give those out very often.
