

Star Trek: Insurrection      * 1/2 (out of * * * * )

Directed by Jonathan Frakes.
Cast: Patrick Stewart, Jonathan Frakes, Levar Burton, Brent Spiner, 
Michael Dorn, Donna Murphy, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, F. Murray 
Abraham, Anthony Zerbe.
1998 - 103 minutes.
Rated PG (for mild violence).
Reviewed December 13, 1998.

By Dustin Putman <[email-masked]>
Dustin Putman's Film Reviews <Http://members.aol.com/filmfan16/index.html>

I have never been a "Star Trek" fan, and, to tell the truth, out of the 
five films in the series that I have seen (1,2,3,8,9), I have disliked 
all of them. I do, however, always go into one of these with an open 
mind, and the ninth film in the series, "Star Trek: Insurrection," is no 
exception.

Dropping almost completely the hard-core sci-fi element of the previous 
one in the series, "First Contact," "Insurrection," tells the story of a 
planet that holds only 600 people, known as the Ba'ku, as well as the 
Fountain of Youth. At the start of the picture, the villagers go under 
attack by a second alien species, known as the Son'a, who want to push 
all of the Ba'ku out so that their own race will not die out. Also 
attacking the Ba'ku is Data (Brent Spiner), a robot from the Star Trek 
Enterprise. After returning to Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the 
gang on their space ship, no one can understand why Data was somehow 
taken over by another force. So several of the Star Trek members travel 
down to the planet of the Ba'ku, where Picard meets up and starts to 
fall in love with one of the inhabitants, a sultry, kind alien woman 
(Donna Murphy), who is over six-hundred-years-old, but looks to only be 
in her thirties.

"Star Trek: Insurrection," is a completely unoriginal and cheap-looking 
installment in the series, and is a big step down from, 1996's "First 
Contact," which at least appeared to try to make something a bit 
different. In, "Insurrection," however, it plays like a low-rent episode 
of the television show, due to the small-scale, generic storyline, and 
an emphasis on one-liners rather than excitement. The film was filled 
with nearly non-stop comedy, and worse yet, most of it fell flatter than 
a cartoon character that drops off a cliff. Meanwhile, when there were
 action sequences, they were not at all interesting or inventive, 
relying on that old reliable ticking timer that counts down very, very 
slowly. This plot device, which is seen in just about every action film 
made nowadays, is getting old fast. Are filmmakers so bankrupt of 
ingenuity and ideas that they must always have a timer ticking away 
during the climax?

Another element of, "Star Trek," films in general is that Picard seems 
to always have to have a love interest, but then she always miraculously 
disappears when the next film is made two or three years later. Although 
Donna Murphy, who falls victim to this thankless love interest role 
here, is actually one of the few characters that we get to know in the 
103-minute running time, Alfre Woodard was far superior in, "First 
Contact." She should have returned for this one, but I don't blame her 
for not wanting to waste her time with this movie's disappointing and 
often lifeless screenplay, by Michael Piller.

"Star Trek: Insurrection," is perhaps the weakest film in the "Star 
Trek," series, although I have not seen what is widely considered the 
worst, "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier." "Insurrection," is the type of 
"safe" sequel that will bewilder non-fans, since it is so low-tech 
compared to most of today's blockbuster action films (although most of 
these are honestly not very good, either), and should disappoint the 
loyal Trekkies, since it could have easily been better if the makers had 
realized that the screenplay needed to go through a few more drafts. On 
second thought, they probably should have completely thrown the script 
out. That way, they could have come up with a story that at least had a 
sign of intelligence and freshness.