Blu-ray Movie Reviews

Star Trek: The Monotonous Picture

Kirk and crew reunite after many years being lost in the wilderness. Approximately 45 minutes of plot, 30 minutes of ship porn, and 1 hour of reaction shots.

Geoff: It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this movie. I now remember why. It’s not that TMP is “bad” it’s that it’s boring. And honestly, that’s far worse. I’m not sure what Robert Wise (director) or Harold Livingston (writer) were thinking. Sure, if you dive into the history of the troubled process of getting this movie made, and even more troubled production, a lot of why this movie is the way it is becomes clear. None of that matters. What matters is on the screen, and what’s on the screen is… brutal. The scene of Kirk going over to the Enterprise in drydock goes on for 10 minutes, without dialog. 10. Minutes. Then there’s entering V’Ger… 20 minutes without dialog (roughly). Nothing but reaction shots and OK special effects. It’s not that this movie has pacing issues compared to modern movies, it has pacing issues compared to contemporary movies. Take any 10 minutes of Star Wars, which came out 2 years earlier, and you’ve moved the story along several times.

Anyway, whatever. There are other Star Trek movies I dislike more than this one, but boring me for over 2 hours is way worse. Never again.

Rank: 13th

Carolina:To quote William Shatner, after he saw the movie for the first time: "Well, that's it. We gave it our best shot, it wasn't good, and it will never happen again." I am in complete and utter shock that this movie ever got a sequel and that this is the first movie that would start out a long line of the biggest sci-fi properties.

There's no urgency to the mission, there's no excitement, the pace is ungodly slow, some scenes go on forever without anything happening, it's a bad introduction to these beloved characters, it's an insult to the fans who've been waiting 12 years to see these characters again, and I doubt this movie brought new fans to the property,

Now to be fair, there are some good scenes, I would never expect less from legendary director Robert Wise. There are some great shots here and there, but that does not save the story. You would think that at the end the payoff would be good, but it's like something from the Twilight Zone. I don't think that's an accident. According to some sources, the script was originally going to be a two-parter episode for a relaunch of Star Trek, I can see that if you trim the fat and have more character moments you have an ok episode, but this story is not meant for the silver screen.

This movie's biggest crime is being too boring. In the end, this is one Star Trek movie you can skip.

Rank: 13th

Picture Quality: A lot of soft images, quite obviously not filmed on expensive or large stock. The split diopter shots do not hold up to HD and large home theater viewings. Really distracting and weird.