Galaxy Quest (1999)
Directed by Dean Parisot
For four years, the courageous crew of the NSEA Protector — Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, Lieutenant Tawny Madison, and Doctor Lazarus — set off on a thrilling and often dangerous mission in space... until their series was cancelled! Now, twenty years later, aliens under attack have mistaken the Galaxy Quest television transmissions for "historical documents" and beam up the crew of has-been actors to save the universe. With no script, no director, and no clue, the actors must turn in the performances of their lives.
6 connections found
View:
6 films that influenced Galaxy Quest
What critics say influenced Galaxy Quest
When Jason and his fellow actors get a first look at the actual, full-size, genuine spaceship the aliens have built in replica of the TV show's cardboard model Protector, the sequence is a shot-for-shot take-off of the similar scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, that long, slow, lovemaking pan around the ship in dock.
Most sci-fi spoofs -- think Mel Brooks' 1987 debacle "Spaceballs" -- that have tried to do parodies of the "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" phenomena have fallen flat on their interstellar faces.
When all is said and done, Dean Parisot’s is pretty much an on the nose satire of William Shatner and his legacy with the “Star Trek” series but–wait–it also happens to be a rather entertaining spin on “Seven Samurai.”
Director Dean Parisot (Home Fries), working from a sharp script by newcomer David Howard and Robert Gordon (Addicted to Love), understands the Trek ethos.
In these early scenes, director Dean Parisot ( "Home Fries" ) gets the atmosphere exactly right with a sea of paunchy, pimply, badly-costumed extras shouting out space-jargon inquisitions to the faded stars of the long-canceled show as if they really were their characters.
The perfect companion film to last summer's uproarious documentary Trekkies, this sophomore effort by Parisot (Home Fries) parodies not only Gene Roddenberry's beloved television empire, but also the series' rabid fan base -- and then tosses in a heaping helping of bug-eyed monsters, lithe alien babes, and more tongue-in-cheek homages than you can shake a facehugger at.
Directed by Dean Parisot ( Home Fries , Fun with Dick and Jane ) and written by David Howard and Robert Gordon, Galaxy Quest does a wonderful job sticking by its post-modern premise while balancing all the traditional requirements of a three-act Hollywood comedy.
Director Dean Parisot leaps forward in his second feature (his first was "Home Fries") by letting the jokes arise naturally and keeping an energetic pace.
In this satire of "Star Trek" and Trekkies, as in his nightmare family farce "Home Fries," he applies a deft hand to far-out material -- and proves that nothing can be more uproarious in comedy direction than casting a sane eye on lunatic shenanigans.
Advertisement
Robert Zemeckis's Contact (1997) is without a doubt the finest movie in recent memory to deal with the question of what might be happening to all those rays of media dreck TV shows, radio programs, and the like we've been beaming higgledy-piggledy through the cosmos for the last century.
The cast of Galaxy Quest turn out for rote appearances at conventions and the grand openings of electronics superstores, but they are bitter at being stuck in their hackneyed roles forever: Gwen DeMarco (Sigourney Weaver: Alien Resurrection, The Ice Storm ) resents her blond bimbo character, Lt. Tawny Madison, whose uniform is perpetually unzipped to reveal pneumatically enhanced cleavage; Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman: Dogma, Michael Collins ), weary of his alter ego, the alien Dr. Lazarus of Tev'Meck, moans that he "played Richard the Third" and now is reduced to spouting Lazarus's pseudoreligious mumbo-jumbo.