Star Trek Beyond

After the darkness that was the last Star Trek movie, the franchise has taken a much lighter turn. This can only be expected when you team up Justin Lin, director of the Fast & Furious movies, and Simon Pegg, who wrote the script. This tongue in cheek approach is a much needed thing in the current Hollywood climate, but is also a step away from the general nature of Star Trek which might upset long time fans.

The crew of the Enterprise are more than halfway through their five-year voyage through space and have stopped at deep space station Yorktown for some much needed respite. James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is questioning his place as captain and applies to be the Vice Admiral of Yorktown. But that process is stalled when an escape pod drifts into the Yorktown space and the survivor on board claims that her ship was attacked in a nebula and are being held on a remote planet. Kirk and his crew go to the planet only to be attacked themselves. It turns out that the alien Krall (Idris Elba) was after a part of a superweapon that Kirk has. Luckily, another alien prisoner Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) is able to help figure out how to save the day.

What made this movie really work for me was the simplicity of the plot. It's a very basic rescue mission/escape movie. Pegg has written a script that really allows for focusing on the characters rather than getting bogged down in a story that is steeped in Star Trek lore. This also means that we get to see characters grow in and develop in this new universe. Simon Pegg also infuses the movie with plenty of humour that pleases both fans Pegg and these movies. One such example is when they use the Beastie Boys 'Sabotage' to save the day and refer to it as classical music. Justin Lin is also very adept at filming action and there is a lot more on the ground action than spaceship fighting, but that's what he does so well.

Due to Pegg's familiarity with his castmates, he has written a script that definitely plays to their strengths. One of these recipients is Karl Urban, which is good because Bones is definitely my favourite character. Also the character of Sulu is padded out a little more, as he given a husband and a daughter. While there has been an outcry against this, it doesn't harm the story at all and actually made me feel more a character who has been relegated to the background in the other two movies. There was a point where I was listening to Krall speak, and I wondered whether it was Idris Elba. No, I thought, he's not in this. Turns out he is, but still his performance isn't up there with some of the ones he's given in the past. Newcomer Sophia Boutella makes the character Jaylah very likeable.

In our current world of gritty reboots, Star Trek Beyond is a fun, bubbly adventure. Sure, it is part of a series that historically has taken itself very seriously, but this time round it's just a lot of fun to watch Captain Kirk and his pals wisecrack their way through the action. Also, the massive inside out planet that is Yorktown is really a wonder to see.

Identity Thief

It occurs to me that Jason can only play two characters; Jason Bateman and Michael Bluth. While it may seem that they are two different characters, they aren't that far removed. In this movie, he is definitely playing Jason Bateman.

The plot of this movie is simple enough. Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman) has his identity stolen by an overweight Florida resident (Melissa McCarthy). Sandy has just become a senior VP at a new financial firm when he discovers the bad news. The police inform him that they can do nothing about it, as it is outside their jurisdiction. Sandy hatches a plan in which he will coerce the other Sandy to confess her crime to his boss Daniel (John Cho). So off he goes to Florida, only to discover that he must drive back to Denver with his detainee.

So what seems like a simple road trip movie is slightly complicated by the fact that the other Sandy (real name Diana) is being followed by both a bounty hunter and two drug dealers controlled by a mysterious prisoner (Jonathan Banks). I found that these characters added an extra layer to the film that was not really needed, but didn't detract from the main storyline too much.

It seems that Seth Gordon has just taken Bateman's character from his last film Horrible Bosses and just put him in a new situation. The jokes in the film aren't hysterically funny, but they aren't unfunny either.

Jason Bateman's character Sandy is a kind of hapless sort who falls into the situation that causes him all this grief very easily. His role here is very much as a straight man to McCarthy, with lots of jokes at his expense about his feminine name. I feel as though Melissa McCarthy is quite up to the standard that she has been in the past. I found the funniest jokes from her were the ones where she tries to sing.

There were a few good cameos from Jon Favreau, Eric Stonestreet and Jonathan Banks (of Breaking Bad fame, fans of that character will recognise him instantly), but all these characters stories never got resolved and it would have been good just to have a round up of them in the closing credits.

Verdict: It's a bit of gamble seeing this movie. You could find McCarthy's antics hilarious or grating. It works well as a road trip movie, but Todd Philips has done better.