Star Trek: Nemesis Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)January 6th, 2003
STAR TREK: NEMESIS
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
"What's this all about?" Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) asks his clone, Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy), in STAR TREK: NEMESIS, the tenth in the STAR TREK saga, a franchise in the process of self-destruction. You'll be asking yourself the same question while watching this terminally uninteresting think piece, a sci-fi snoozer for Trekkies, oops I mean Trekkers, only.
This badly written diatribe about the downside of human cloning moves at a snail's pace. The only good news about the production is that it is so darkly lit that most of it is barely visible. If I had a movie this lame, I'd want to hide it too.
The story has the Starship Enterprise going to a "pre-warp civilization," where they discover the pieces of an android named B-4. As soon as they locate its head, they realize that he is the spitting image of Data. Brent Spiner plays both parts with panache. B-4, like an obnoxious toddler, is a dim-witted prototype who possess a kid's fascination with the word "why."
As Captain Picard's evil clone lumbers around, trying to outsmart the captain, the audience is left wondering what will become of a series showing such obvious signs of senility. Certainly nothing in the movie gives us any reason to care about the characters or the story's outcome.
"I don't know if all of this made any sense," the captain says to B-4. B-4's responds, "I don't understand." To which you'll probably want to add, "Nor do we care."
STAR TREK: NEMESIS runs a long 1:56. It is rated PG-13 for "sci-fi action violence and peril and a scene of sexual content" and would be acceptable for kids around 8 and up.
My son Jeffrey, age 13, gave it ** 1/2, saying that this was his least favorite STAR TREK and that there was too much talking. His friend George, age 11, gave it **, saying that he thought the problem was that they were trying too hard.
The film is playing now in nationwide release in the United States. In the Silicon Valley, it is showing at the AMC and the Century theaters.
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