nightscreamnovi Reviews

Star Trek: Nemesis (2002)

Mildly entertaining as a superficial action piece, but not much there on a deeper level. Better than Generations or Insurrection, but not by a lot.

[6/10 · 11 December 2002]

The movie seems to follow the same formula as the last three:

Start off with a quiet or light-hearted scene, involving the crew, send them off to meet the ConflictTM, establish the conflict, and any character arcs, and then wrap it up in an ultimate space battle.

You can pretty much see this as it unfolds. That isn't the worst crime in the world, and since I can guess that the action will be pretty good, the big question for me is whether what really makes a good Trek film-its HEART comes through.

Unfortunately, the answer for me is no.

As a movie, "ST Nemesis" ultimately fails because of its villain-Shinzon. Okay, so he's a clone of Picard. So what?

Cloning has been done loads of times, and the theme of a character experiencing doubt as he ponders how the existence of a doppelganger reflects upon him has been done before. We got this in the NextGen episode "Time Squared." We got it in the episode "Second Chances." We didn't need it again, and the way it's portrayed here, I don't buy it. In "Time Squared," Picard HAD to doubt himself, because the fact that apparently questionable actions on his part resulted in tragedy is something that already happened, albeit in the future. In "Second Chances," Riker has to accept the fact that his doppelganger is him, and was him, right up until eight years ago, and cannot take solace in the fact that they had separate lives and experiences prior to then. The tendency for Riker to ponder how this other Will Riker reflects upon him is inescapable. Here, we're supposed to believe that Shinzon's childish taunt to Picard-the insinuation that Picard somehow shares in the responsibility for things that Shinzon does-actually gives pause to Picard, and I don't buy it for a second. Picard should be smart enough to know that what Shinzon does has nothing to do with him, regardless of his genetics. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of genetics and personality dynamics should know that genetics alone do not determine character, and even if they did, Picard shouldn't be worrying at this stage in his life about whether atrocities committed by someone with the same DNA as him says anything about himself. Thankfully, the movie itself doesn't really embrace this character point wholeheartedly, and after some patented "ABC Afterschool Special"-esque "You can FIGHT it, Shinzon! You can CHOOSE your own destiny!" dialogue, the point is dropped.

This wouldn't be so bad if the movie at least gave him a solid motivation for wanting to attack Earth. This guy was conceived by the Romulans as a weapon, tossed aside when not wanted anymore and tortured by Romulan guards all his life, and his main beef is with the Federation? Why is this? Shouldn't his main problems be with Romulans? What does he care about Earth, or the Federation? His entire plan, if you want to call it that, seems like nothing more than a gigantic child's tantrum. If this kid grew up in Reman mines, where did he get educated? How did he amass an army?

More than anything, both this movie and the previous one give the impression that the creators are just going through the motions. Riker and Troi's wedding seems thrown in, not because the writers are really interested at this point in their relationship, but because the feeling seems to be that well, they might as well get married. It's as if the creators feel at this point that they can no longer rationalize having Riker remain a Commander, so they have to give him his own command. It's as if they feel that well, everyone wants to get him and Troi together, so let's do it now just in case there are no more movies. This is really a shame, because how Riker and Troi got to this point in their relationship might've been a truly interesting character issue to explore in the movie, and that this was abandoned in favor of some worn out clone revenge story demonstrates that creators do not feel that the best stories come from exploring some the regular characters' most familiar conflicts and interactions with one another, but with contrived cardboard villains.

Data's death? Well, there was nothing illogical about it, so I can't really fault it. It flowed logically from the story, but at the same time, though, I can't say I really care. I don't know if it's because I no longer empathize with the character, or because there's nothing to preclude his return in the next movie.

Perhaps Donatra beamed him off at the last second. Who cares?

As far as the action? It's great. Great space battle. Great explosions. The ramming sequence between the Enterprise and the Scimitar will no doubt be remembered as one of the best Trek action sequences, along with the Enterprise-D's saucer crash and the Borg battle from "ST First Contact." The production design and FX are great. Technobabble is at a minimum, except for one or two descriptions of the thelaron weapon. The occasional humorous bits were good, and not as forced as in "ST Insurrection." Despite the theme and characterization problems with the film, I didn't notice any huge fundamental plot holes. It was nice to see Wesley at Riker and Troi's wedding, and Guinan as well. I was also glad that Janeway's appearance was kept brief.

Eight Crazy Nights (2002)

It IS bad, and it IS drawn that way.

[25 November 2002]

Sandler plays Davey Stone, a local Scrooge-like ne'er do well/slacker/drunk who, after being convicted of a crime, is sentenced to coach a basketball team as community service. He works alongside another coach, Whitey Duvall, who, along with his twin sister Eleanor, are the town doormats, and befriends a boy named Benjamin and his mother Jennifer.

I'm not an Adam Sandler fan. But I was at the screening, and I was curious enough to see how Sandler would handle what is ostensibly an animated holiday movie. I figured maybe he was willing to fill a void for Jewish kids who didn't have an equivalent of all those beloved Christmas cartoons we grew up with.

If I were Jewish, I'd be outraged.

Hell, I'm NOT Jewish, and I'm STILL outraged.

This is not a Chanukah movie. Saying that it is one simply because there are characters celebrating it in the movie is akin to saying "Die Hard" is a Christmas movie because it is set during the holidays, or that "JFK" is about Mardi Gras because it takes place in New Orleans.

We don't learn anything about Chanukah, or what it means to the Jewish characters. We don't get a speech by a Linus character juxtaposed with a hapless character who can only get the flimsiest Minora at the store. Chanukah is just an incidental footnote relegated to the background.

But what's really disturbing is the adult content in the movie, given who the intended audience is. I don't believe in the current thinking in recent comedies that putting as many appearances by excrement and semen as possible in a film is somehow funny. It's not. I don't WANT to see excrement, animated or not. It's stupid, it's nauseating, and its inclusion indicates a lack of talent. "8 Crazy Nights" is another entry into this "scat genre" of comedy, as there are several GRAPHIC appearances by it. And it doesn't end there. There's scenes involving the positioning of unconscious people with their hands in compromising places, scenes focusing on the jock strap of an obese man, and profanity of the four-letter variety.

Now I don't object to adult cartoons. Whereas less enlightened people may insist that cartoons and comic books are strictly for kids, and should be kept that way, I don't. What I find outrageous about this is that Columbia is marketing this piece of trash to people age 13-21. Thankfully, I didn't see many 13-year olds there, but the fact that Columbia wanted them is appalling. Most of the audience that was there liked the film, it received some good applause at the end, and even ABC movie critic Joel Siegel laughed throughout it.

Is there anything redeeming in the film? Well, the animation is okay. It was cool to see characters voiced by Sandler, Jon Lovitz and Kevin Nealon that looked just like them. The scenes with the deer that DON'T involve body functions are cute. And of course, I enjoyed the third version of Adam Sandler's Chanukah song over the end credits, but then again, you can just download the video of him and Rob Schneider performing it on "SNL" at Sandler's official site.

There's some attempt at heartwarming fare, as Davey begins to address the cruel way he and the rest of the town have treated Whitey and Eleanor, but the problem is that it's so damn depressing the way the movie makes you slog through 90 minutes of abject cruelty toward them in order to get there. It's bad enough that the entire town treats the two twins like absolute losers and freaks. But what's more fundamentally disturbing is that the movie ITSELF does. Much like the films of the Farrelly brothers, it seems to take some perverse fascination with physical ailments, deformities and injuries of people who don't look like other people.

Whitey and Eleanor for example, are only a few feet tall. Whitey has had white hair all his life. He suffers frequent seizures. He is so hirsute, that during a skins vs. shirts basketball game in which we see him topless, he looks like he's wearing an angora sweater. Eleanor has to carefully pluck the middle of her brow to keep from looking like Frida Kahlo. She's as bald as an eagle.

Other characters include an amputee, a homeless person who calls attention to their body odor, a couple of obese people to whose weight graphic attention is called is paid, and a woman with three bouncing breasts without explanation why.

But worse, the movie is disingenuous, because it milks the twins' physical abnormalities and the way everyone is abusive towards them for cheap laughs, so when it tries to have the town coming together to show them that oh, they really care about these two, it's like a bully who kicks the snot of someone, and then pats him on the head before leaving him in the gutter, as if to say, "Hey, no hard feelings, buddy." It doesn't take a stand AGAINST abusive behavior the way films like "My Bodyguard" or "Three O'Clock High" do, it simply stands on the sidelines laughing at it like a fair-weather friend, and then has the nerve to condemn it at the last minute. The movie is so cynical that even someone who sincerely feels shame and regret about his childhood abusiveness towards Eleanor, and tries to apologize to her, isn't taken seriously by the film. Indeed, you can get an idea of the type of nihilistic attitude the film has toward the holidays by the verbal greeting Sandler gives you when you enter the film's official site. Hell, the film is so cynical that I even noticed several PRODUCT PLACMENTS, for cryin' out loud, the first time I've ever noticed them in an animated movie.

I feel sorry for Jewish parents and children who might've liked to have a heartwarming holiday cartoon. Instead they got just another 90 minutes of the usual unfunny Sandler toilet humor, profanity, cynicism and nastiness.

Oy vey.