Star Trek Reviews
Top Critic
One of the most accessible and entertaining films of the year.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
The young cast is mostly callow and TV-bland and the special effects don't quite seem worth that hefty price tag, but overall this is a presentable addition to the franchise.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
With Star Trek Abrams honors the show's legacy without fossilizing its best qualities. Instead, he's whisked it off to a planet where numbing nostalgia can't kill it, and where the future is still something to look forward to.
The wit and youthful energy that's been infused into the new Star Trek should enable this venerable franchise to live longer and prosper more handsomely.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
In going back to tell the Enterprise story from the beginning, Star Trek presses collective emotional buttons people didn't even know they had. At its best, the effect is like seeing life panoramically, past and future, simultaneous and magnificent.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Star Trek goes back to the legend's roots with a boldness that brings a fatigued franchise back to life.
You needn't know the secret handshakes or utter the Vulcan blessing "live long and prosper" to gain admission to, and enjoy, summer's first thrill ride.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
In his daft, dizzy reinvention of a moribund franchise, Abrams has found a way to be referential without being reverential, to conjure nostalgia without being constrained by it.
The overall impression is one of unbridled enthusiasm on the part of the film's makers, both for its predecessors and for the brave new universe Abrams and his crew are exploring.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/6
I can name exactly three and a half things "Star Trek" gets wrong -- and I can name about a thousand that Abrams and his cast and crew get absolutely, pitch-perfect, elegantly right.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Quinto is the one person here who may leave teen-aged viewers more perplexed than puffed up; he somehow rebukes the movie's whole obsession with backstory and immaturity by seeming riper and wiser than the charmless folly that is spun around him.
It is pleasant to report that though it's not perfect, the reconstituted Star Trek is successful enough for everyone to breathe a sigh of relief.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
The aim here is to court a new generation of fans without alienating the true believers speaking Klingon in the box-office lines.
Full Review
| Original Score: 9/10
This is really the story of how the Enterprise crew meets, hammers out its differences and becomes a team, and the telling is pure bliss.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
There are many satisfyingly sly flourishes in Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's script.
You couldn't ask for a less ponderous, more rollicking time.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Abrams' cannily constructed prequel respects (for the most part) the rules of that world and, more importantly, retains the original Star Trek's spirit of optimism, curiosity, and humor.
hen it comes to sheer spectacle, Star Trek, as re-imagined by J.J. Abrams, delivers.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A movie that, against all odds, has miraculously resurrected a wheezing but beloved franchise.
Abrams' redo isn't just a blast from the past. It's a blast.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
It's also a pleasure to report that, not only have Gene Roddenberry's ideas stood up pretty well over the decades, so have Spock's ears.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A film that should appeal to longtime Trekkies, sci-fi neophytes and pretty much anybody who likes a good action flick.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
The summer movie season has barely begun, but already one thing is certain: It will have at least one indisputably great movie.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
The new Star Trek motion picture seeks to extend a lucrative brand with a young demographic. But it's a real movie -- breathlessly paced bordering on manic, but propulsively entertaining.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
It's an exciting, stellar-yet-earthy blast that successfully blends the hip and the classic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
The happy result is action-friendly, nerd-friendly, and fundamentally optimistic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
The Gene Roddenberry years, when stories might play with questions of science, ideals or philosophy, have been replaced by stories reduced to loud and colorful action.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman manage to morph the new actors into the general outlines of the original crew, but even as they slip into the old character molds, they immediately start to break out of them.
That jolt of energy may resuscitate the franchise; its breathing, however, feels shallow.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
The naturalistic asides slung among our heroes are more than compensatory, establishing both a believable, well-oiled discipline and a collegial camaraderie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/6
It took decades of increasingly mediocre TV series and Data-dull movies to beat Star Trek to death. But J.J. Abrams brings it all back to basics.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
A new creation, one that serves as a self-contained film and a launching pad for a continuation of the franchise, one that should live long and prosper.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Trading on affections sustained over 40 years of popular culture, Star Trek does what a franchise reboot rarely does. It reminds us why we loved these characters in the first place.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
It's enough to move even a Star Wars fan to tears.
Either you'll go with it or you won't. Regardless, based on Abrams' ambition and scope in rejuvenating the franchise, it's clear it still has plenty of room to live long and prosper.
The setup is complete; now it's time to see whether the implied potential of this first entry into a new series can be realized in its sequel.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
This is a totally character driven film with five exceptionally-cast people.
I think JJ Abrams walks the line gracefully between honoring the original series and introducing the pop culture movie masses to these characters.
If you care about this universe (and I do, damn it), you won't sit passively through J.J. Abrams's restart Trek. You'll marvel at the smarts and wince at the senselessness. You'll nitpick it to death and thrill to it anyway.
Blasting onto the screen at warp speed and remaining there for two hours, the new and improved Star Trek will transport fans to sci-fi nirvana.
Paced at warp speed with spectacular action sequences rendered brilliantly and with a cast so expert that all the familiar characters are instantly identifiable, the film gives Paramount Pictures a new lease of life on its franchise.
