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Phoning Home

Jacob Appel

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Book

Phoning Home is a collection of entertaining and thought-provoking essays featuring the author's...

Seal Team Flix

8.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Tabletop Game

SEAL TEAM FLIX is a fully co-operative or solo tactical dexterity game that pits 1-4 players against...

Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (1986) in Movies

Sep 28, 2021

Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (1986)

1986 | Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi

7.7

(26 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

Following a continued trend of alternating duff and good movies, here comes the most ‘non-Trek-like’ movie in the series: “Star Trek IV”, aka “Whale Meat again”.

By watching the films in sequence, I find the destructive alien ship approaching earth to be an obvious re-tread of “The Motion Picture” premise. But beyond that, the plot is completely bonkers. The time travel is trivially referenced as if they are nipping down to the local shops. But once there, there is fun to be had. Cue lots of comical fish out of water (no pun intended) situations for the 23rd century crew:

Spock’s attempts to utilise colourful language;
Chekov asking San Franciscans for directions to the “nuclear wessel”;
“Computer?” asks Scotty to the Commodore 64 on the desk… (we won’t tell them that they don’t have to wait 300 years to be able to talk to computers!)
Catherine Hicks nicely plays the cute marine biologist and love interest (and only 10 years Shatner’s junior!) – – although her reaction to discovering the ‘truth’ is a rather unbelievable “oh!”. (Later edit: oops… dodgy maths…. the age difference between Shatner and Hicks is actually 20 years!)

All in all, although rather shoving its Greenpeace-style credentials down the viewer’s throats, this is a fun and family-friendly outing in the series.

Kudos

Swords & Riches

Chad Shenberger

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Book

An exciting adventure story with strong Christian values. In the world of Zera, even a simple...

fiction adventure Christian fiction bookbuzz

Bob Mann (459 KP) rated Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) in Movies

Oct 7, 2020

Some laugh out loud moments (0 more)

Scattergun approach - chaotic and some dud scenes (0 more)

And you thought Tenet's timey wimey stuff was confusing?

Thirty-One years after the first Bill and Ted movie, and 29 years after the slightly disappointing sequel, the dudes are back for a three-quel. Older... but not much wiser.

Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are the only ones that can save reality. If they don't play the 'song that will unite humanity' at 7:17 at MP42 then the whole of time and space will unravel. It's already happening, with historical characters zapping here and there at random. There are only two problems: 1) they have no idea where MP42 is and; 2) the no-hoper wedding singers haven't written the song... yet.

Zipping forwards in time, they plan to steal the song from their future selves.

Meanwhile their daughters Thea (Samara Weaving) and Kelly (Kristen Schaal) travel backwards in time to assemble a world-class backing band. (As an aside, it is astonishing how much Weaving looks like Margot Robbie - never a bad thing in my book! If there is ever a biopic requiring a young and old version of her character, they will save a BOMB on the CGI bill!)

Meanwhile (meanwhile) Bill and Ted's princess brides (now Erinn Hayes as Elizabeth and Jayma Mays as Joanna) are unsettled with their marriages and are jumping from time to time to see if they can be happy with any version of Bill and Ted.

Death (William Sadler) quotes a Wyld Stallyns review as "A raging confused mess". And it really applies to this too! The screenplay, by original Bill and Ted writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon, is all over the place. With a scattergun approach to the comedy, some of the lines firmly stick to the wall - making me guffaw with laughter - and others are just plain duds.

Some of the scenes - a "couples therapy" session for example - seem to be desperately trying to be milked for all they're worth. Even the "monkey" after the end titles - with "old dudes" rocking out - isn't worth the wait.

But, contrary to that, it's also difficult not to be swept along with the anarchic joy of the concoction. The movie of course leans heavily on the nostalgic catchphrases and air guitar riffs of years gone by. But there's no shame in that. And there's a star quality cameo at one point that entertains.

Director Dean Parisot - most famous for the minor classic "Galaxy Quest" - manages to rustle all this diverse material into something that overall still manages to leave an overall stupid grin on your face. As a comedy it passes the '6-laugh' test, but - as someone who has never been a great "Bill and Ted" fan - it's not a classic. But I can see how "Bill and Ted" fans, like my daughter Jenn, would have loved it (and she did).

(For the graphical review, check out One Mann's Movies on t'internet here https://bob-the-movie-man.com/2020/10/06/bill-and-ted-party-on-til-we-drop-dudes/ . Thx.)