Bob Roberts

When Tim Robbins’ mockumentary Bob Roberts was released in 1992 it was regarded as topical biting political satire, taking jabs at both Democrats and Republicans as well as the media that covers them. The film’s titular character was a hilariously creepy mash-up of Bob Dylan and Gordon Gekko, one that seemed like an extreme character carefully crafted by Robbins to comment on the political climate at the time. George Bush was on his way out of the Presidency making way for Bill Clinton and so Bob Roberts acted as kind of a transition between them.

In retrospect, Robbins was trying to warn us. It’s now 2016 and America is in danger of electing a real-life Bob Roberts in the form of billionaire tycoon Donald Trump. Both men are polarizing figures appealing to disenfranchised white people on a grass roots level that is as fascinating to watch as it is more than a little scary because they tap into an ugly xenophobic streak that lurks in the heart of the country. As a result, Robbins’ film has gradually morphed from mockumentary into documentary.

Bob Roberts chronicles the titular character’s run for Senate in Pennsylvania as documented by Terry Manchester (Brian Murray) and his British film crew. Born to hippie parents, Roberts (Robbins) rebelled as a teen and enrolled in military school, then went to Yale and from there earned a fortune on Wall Street. We get an indication early on of Roberts’ true colors when he clashes with a television talk show host (Lynne Thigpen) on a morning show over the 1960s, which he claims was a “dark stain on American history,” in regards to social protest and the counterculture. Afterwards, she is interviewed by Manchester and says of Roberts, “Here’s a man who has adopted the persona and mindset of the free-thinking rebel and turned it on itself,” which best sums up the aspiring politician.

Roberts is running against incumbent Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal) who represents old school politics and is presented in the media as old and stuffy while the former is young and dynamic, appealing to people that are tired of business as usual politics, but this is merely a smoke screen to distract from the fact that he’s just as corrupt as any established politician. He applies the ruthlessness of Wall Street to politics, doing whatever it takes to get the votes needed to win. Paiste points out that Roberts is very good at “the politics of emotion,” and asks, “What’s behind it? I don’t see anybody home. But what I will say that once or twice during the course of our debate I detected a slight whiff of sulfur in the air.” Paiste represents the old guard who tried to make a difference in politics but lost their way and were mired in its byzantine procedures.

The late 1980s and early 1990s was very good to Tim Robbins with a breakout role in Bull Durham (1988) and then going onto being in three Robert Altman films, including The Player (1992), which earned him the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. He wisely parlayed the buzz that surrounded him into writing, directing and starring in the low-budget Bob Roberts, which, along with the aforementioned The Player and his next Altman film Short Cuts (1993), saw the actor play a trifecta of unlikeable men abusing their positions of power. Not surprisingly, Bob Roberts is the juiciest role of the three as he gives himself the plum role of a neo-conservative folk singer cum businessman with aspirations to the Senate. Robbins portrays Roberts as a man that plays it close to the vest, revealing little about himself or what he truly believes in front of the cameras and is content to spout soundbite rhetoric. There is an icy, smiling façade that Roberts chillingly maintains throughout the film like a shark about to attack.

Ray Wise and Alan Rickman play Roberts’ campaign chairman and manager respectively with the former always upbeat and positive; grinning for the cameras while the latter is enigmatic and stern only to be later embroiled in an Oliver North/Contragate-type scandal. A young Jack Black pops up (in his feature film debut) as a particularly zealous fan of Roberts and the actor memorably conveys the scary devotion of the aspiring politician’s most rabid supporters.

Giancarlo Esposito plays John Alijah “Bugs” Raplin, a fast-talking, muckraking journalist who writes for underground publications and persistently attempts to get an interview with Roberts. His goal is to dig up evidence of the campaign chairman’s shady dealings and thereby implicating Roberts. Esposito does a fantastic job of treading a fine line of conspiracy theorist who is doing the kind of relentless legwork that mainstream publications used to do but that have by and large been co-opted by corporations. Bugs represents the film’s angry voice as he rails against the “dealmakers” that pass for politicians.

The amusing riffs on Roberts’ Dylan-esque musical career include album covers that rip-off the legendary folk singer’s and a music video for a song called “Wall Street Rap” that copies the famous one for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with female dancers in the background that references the supermodel band that appeared in Robert Palmer’s iconic video for “Addicted to Love.” One of the film’s highpoints are the songs that Roberts performs throughout. They are hilarious in their naked, ultra-conservative sloganeering with such song titles as “Times Are Changin’ Back”, “Retake America”, and “Drugs Stink.” The lyrics to these songs skewer conservatives’ hatred of anything the reeks of socialism as “Complain” demonstrates:

“I don’t have a house. I don’t have a car.

I spend all my money getting drunk in a bar.

I wanna be rich. I don’t have a brain.

Just give me a handout while I complain.”

These songs flip the traditional protest song on its head so that it is the conservatives that rail against liberalism. With the possibility of these songs played straight and their lyrics taken out of their satirical context, it is easy to see why Robbins has never released the soundtrack. Can you imagine what Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio would do with them? Robbins felt that they were “funny” and “entertaining,” but out of context: “I don’t trust the songs. And I personally don’t want to be driving in my car five years from now and hear that bile on the radio.”

Robbins’ film also critiques the media, in particular local news stations, which he satirizes by casting well-known actors like Helen Hunt, James Spader, Fred Ward, and Peter Gallagher among others in cameos as sycophantic newscasters blatantly sympathetic to Roberts. Gallagher, in particular, is funny as a more obvious suck-up who pathetically waves after Roberts even after the man has left the room. The film suggests that these vapid T.V. personalities hitch themselves to Roberts’ gravy train because they can sense that he will be the next big thing but are quick to turn on him at the first hint of a serious scandal.

Stylistically, Bob Roberts is reminiscent of the heavy metal mockumentary This is Spinal Tap (1984) – at one point Roberts gets lost in an auditorium trying to find the stage – and the Bob Dylan documentary Dont Look Back (1967) – it adopts a similar cinema verite approach – with a dash of Robert Altman’s Tanner ’88 (1988) for good measure. Robbins mixes them all together to create a funny and smart satire that takes aim at American politics and the media that covers it. The film also critiques the tactics of campaigning and how it consists mostly of ugly mudslinging, which, unfortunately, has only gotten worse. This makes Bob Roberts just as relevant today as it was back in 1992 – in fact, maybe even more so with the rise of Donald Trump and his fellow Republican nominees of which we can see more than a little of Roberts in the agenda and rhetoric of Cruz, Rubio, et al.

Watching Bob Roberts recently, and in light of Trump’s run for the Republican Party nomination, it is eerie how Robbins’ film anticipates things that actually have happened in real-life. Like the violence that has erupted at recent Trump rallies, we see a group of dissenters beaten up by security at one of Roberts’ rallies that masquerade as concerts. Much like some of Trump’s more enthusiastic supporters, we see Roberts’ fanatical supporters mix it up with the protesters outside a venue after a concert. Most interestingly, Roberts appears on Cutting Edge Live, a Saturday Night Live-type hip sketch comedy show, as its musical guest. Robbins’ long-time friend and fellow actor John Cusack makes a cameo appearance as the host who openly shows disdain for Roberts, which anticipated the protests of several Hispanic organizations against Trump hosting SNL in November 2015. Like Trump, Roberts uses bullying tactics and fascist imagery, which seemed extreme in 1992 but are commonplace now.

The origins for Bob Roberts came from Tim Robbins’ dismay at returning home to Greenwich Village after being away for eight years and finding that many artists and bohemian types had left only to be replaced by a lot of franchises. “I started thinking about what would happen if all of those businessmen picked up guitars.” Initially, he wrote Roberts as a businessman folk singer and over time his ambitions for the character grew until he had him entering politics. The impetus for the film was Robbins’ interest in “the Hollywoodization of Washington, in the complicity between the media and politics and entertainment and how politics is becoming about image and not substance.”

He began writing the screenplay in 1986 and in the same year tried out the character on a sketch he made for Saturday Night Live. Robbins then spent the next few years trying to get it made as a feature film but the political content scared off the studios in Hollywood and most potential financial backers. The few independent producers that showed interest wanted him to “make it a parody of satire, if you can believe that,” Robbins said. In retrospect, he realized that the script wasn’t ready until two years before actual filming took place. His increased clout as recognizable actor finally convinced Working Title Films, a small British independent film company, to provide the $4 million budget, which meant that all the actors, including the likes of Alan Rickman, worked for scale.

After Bob Roberts received a very positive reaction at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, Miramax and Paramount Studios picked it up for distribution and decided to release the film on Labor Day weekend to coincide with the upcoming election with a modest advertising campaign in cities they felt it would play well. Certain political reporters and media figures in New York, like ABC News anchor Peter Jennings and John McLaughlin, host of the T.V. political show The McLaughlin Group, were courted by the distributors at a special screening during the Democratic National Convention to generate favorable buzz. In addition, influential publications like Vanity Fair were shown an early cut of the film.

Bob Roberts received mostly positive notices from critics. Roger Ebert gave it three out of four stars and wrote, “I like its audacity, its freedom to say the obvious things about how our political process has been debased – but if it had been only about campaign tactics and techniques, I would have liked it more.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “There’s big imagination at work here. The movie sometimes overstates its case, but the music-making, success-oriented Bob represents an authentic American political tradition.”  The Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, “Alan Rickman is magnificently malignant as Robbins’ crypto-fascist right-hand man; his face is a frenzy of twitching tics…Also on the money are the three neoconservative high schoolers who tail Bob everywhere, a collective psycho-glint in their eyes. But Candidate Bob takes the cake, his deer-in-the-headlights gaze trained on his own morning America.”

In his review for The Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Audacious, bracing, uncommonly timely, Bob Roberts would seem almost impossible to pull off. So it is every much to Robbins’ credit as a filmmaker that he manages to do so while rarely getting preachy and never neglecting the importance of movement and excitement in keeping an audience involved.” The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, “The functioning of media itself is Robbins’s true subject, and it’s exciting to see him appropriating some of the ideas of his mentor Robert Altman and giving them more bite than Altman ever has.” However, Entertainment Weekly gave it a “B-“ rating and Owen Gleiberman wrote, “Despite its cleverness, the movie isn’t really very funny; it’s repetitive and a tad monotonous. And that failure, I think is tied to a certain smugness at its core.” When asked about the film in 2016, Robbins said, “What I was doing with that movie was [trying] to shed a light on some of the hypocrisies that exist in the American political system and the way the media covers politics, and unfortunately that is still relevant and that movie still works today.”

In retrospect, Bob Roberts anticipates what the Republican Party has become. In this respect, it is more than a bit spooky that we are now seeing a fictional character like Roberts being brought to life by actual people without a hint of irony or self-awareness. If Robbins’ film was intended as a warning then it went largely unheeded as history, albeit fictional, is repeating itself only instead of art imitating life, life is imitating art.

SOURCES

Bibbani, William. “Tim Robbins on A Perfect Day and Howard the Duck.” Crave Online. January 12, 2016.

Galbraith, Jane. “The Bob Thing: Bob Roberts Seeks ‘Smart, Hip’ Filmgoers Who’ll Vote with their Wallets.” Los Angeles Times. August 30, 1992.

Kloman, Harry. “Tim Robbins, Running Hard.” The New York Times. January 12, 1993.

Murphy, Ryan. “Tim Robbins is Hot – He’s Also Bothered in Bob Roberts, the Film Satire He Wrote, Directed and Stars In, the Actor-Activist Puts His Political Convictions on Display.” Philadelphia Inquirer. September 13, 1992.

Roberge, Chris. “Tim Robbins Campaigns for Bob Roberts and Political Change.” The Tech. September 25, 1992.

Turan, Kenneth. “A Calculated Crapshoot Pays Off for Tim Robbins.” Los Angeles Times. May 13, 1992.

The January Man

Outside of Ishtar (1987) or maybe Gigli (2003), you’d be hard-pressed to find another more critically savaged film than The January Man (1989). And what an ass-kicking it took at the box office, pulling in just under five million dollars in the United States. Why so much vitriol directed at one film? Coming off the success of his Academy Award-winning screenplay for Moonstruck (1987), John Patrick Shanley assumed he could do no wrong and for his next film assembled an impressive roster of talent with Pat O’Connor (A Month in the Country) directing, Marvin Hamlisch (The Sting) composing the score, and a cast that featured the likes of Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, Alan Rickman, Harvey Keitel, and Rod Steiger. For good measure, Shanley’s Moonstruck director Norman Jewison produced the film.


With this insane amount of talent in front of and behind the camera, how could The January Man fail? Critics and audiences were not ready for the end result: a thriller with sudden tonal shifts, veering from comedy to romance to mystery, often within the same scene. Some of the cast delivered low-key performances while others chewed up the scenery. The film was deemed a mess, a disappointing misfire from brilliant artists that should have known better. Yet, the messiness of this film is what I like about it as it reflects the messiness of the protagonist’s life. The January Man is an underrated critique of the thriller genre and deserves to be rediscovered and re-assessed now that enough time has passed.

Someone in New York City is strangling and killing beautiful young women. It has been going on for almost a year with 11 women dead. When the latest victim (Faye Grant) was last seen by the mayor’s daughter Bernadette (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) and could have easily been the one dead, his Honor (Rod Steiger) leans heavily on police commissioner Frank Starkey (Harvey Keitel) to do something about it. He wants the best man the chief’s got on the job and that would Nick Starkey (Kevin Kline), Frank’s estranged brother. It turns out that Nick used to be a hot shot police detective but was screwed over royally in some sort of scandal and is now a firefighter.

We are introduced to Nick as he heroically saves a child from a burning building. After reviving the kid, the understandably exhausted man requests an espresso – the first indication that The January Man is going to be something different. It’s the absurdity of Kline asking for an espresso amidst the carnage of a raging inferno that deflates his heroic action and gives us a clue as to what kind of person we’re dealing with. Nick isn’t some glory hound but genuinely cares about saving lives at the risk of his own. Frank appeals to his brother to help him out and in return he’ll be fully reinstated and given carte blanche on the case. Nick only has one condition: to make dinner for Frank’s wife and his ex-lover, Christine (Susan Sarandon). Judging from her reaction when Frank tells her, she still has feelings for Nick.

Nick returns home to find his best friend Ed (Alan Rickman) painting with a nude female model and a kitten as his subjects (let’s not forget a talking parrot commenting on the action in the corner). Coming off his classic villainous role in Die Hard (1988), Alan Rickman goes completely in the opposite direction with this hilarious low-key character full of dry wit. The actor proceeds to steal the scene (and every other one he’s in) with a simple look he gives Kline while defending his intrusion in Nick’s apartment. He goes from defensive to warm and inviting when he agrees to clear out so that Nick can prepare his dinner for Christine. What also makes Ed such a memorable character is how he speaks, like the way he tells the model, “Just languish there, darling. Don’t molest anything.” It’s how he emphasizes the words, “languish” and “molest” that make this bit so funny. It’s an incredible example of what a great actor can do with a bit of dialogue just by how he says a word a certain way. Apparently, Ed is some kind of computer expert in his spare time and Nick hires him to help out in his investigation.

The scene where local precinct captain Vincent Alcoa (Danny Aiello) confronts the mayor about reinstating Nick under his watch is a master class in over the top profane scenery chewing. Danny Aiello comes in bellowing (“Don’t bullshit me besides screwing me!”) and then takes it up another notch. Not to be outdone, Rod Steiger cranks it up to a whole other level (“You think I’m your wife, you wanna fuck me?!”) and becomes so enraged that you swear his head will explode at some point. Harvey Keitel wisely plays it low key as he does throughout the entire film. So much so that it’s kind of spooky, like he’s sleepwalking his way through the film – uncustomary for the usually intense actor. There is a method to Shanley’s madness, however, as this scene satirizes the hot-tempered chief chewing out a subordinate by showing how ridiculous it is to have two grown men yelling at each other.

The dinner scene between Nick and Christine also subverts convention. One assumes that he is trying to win her back and would prepare food that she would like. But no, he has made the most unusual culinary challenged meal that includes octopus, which Christine is clearly not thrilled with eating. What’s odd about this sequence is its placement in the film. Shanley stops the thriller story cold and inserts this scene that is straight out of a romantic comedy as Nick and Christine rehash old times. Coming off her earthy, sexy role in Bull Durham (1988), Susan Sarandon plays a very different character – one that is cold and distant as she is part of an unhappy marriage. This sequence feels like a different film entirely but it works if you understand what Shanley is trying to do: subvert the conventions of the thriller genre by plopping down a tonally different scene from a disparate genre. It’s a ballsy move on Shanley’s part and a potential deal breaker for an audience expecting a standard thriller. However, what he’s doing is what Quentin Tarantino would excel at in the 1990’s (see Pulp Fiction) so maybe it took audiences a few years to catch up to what Shanley was doing in The January Man.

During his investigation, Nick befriends and then becomes romantically involved with Bernadette, which complicates things on two fronts: she was friends with one of the murder victims and she’s the mayor’s daughter. Their initial meeting is interesting in the sense that it’s a meet-cute right out of a romantic comedy except that their conversation veers from the murder to Nick’s relationship with Christine to him hitting on Bernadette and then having sex with her in the next scene. She’s upset over her friend getting killed and he’s feeling vulnerable after the uncomfortable dinner with Christine. They find a bit of solace together, a brief respite from the ugly murder that they’re both linked to. The script alludes to a rich backstory for Nick with a complicated past that involves his brother and Christine. The details aren’t particularly important, just the fallout and how it informs their relationship with one another in the present.

What I like about Kevin Kline’s character is that he’s a thinker. Director Pat O’Connor shows him studying evidence, observing people and their behavior, all the while analyzing the case in his head. Nick is definitely a left-brain person who thinks outside the box. The role also allows Kline to show off not only his comedic chops (of which are superb) but also his aptitude for drama, like when Nick begins to delve deeper into the case, or the complex relationship with his brother Frank. Kline is a versatile actor able to go back and forth from comedy and drama, often in the same scene, making him the ideal choice for this role. I’ve always found Kline to be an offbeat leading man. He’s not traditionally handsome, like Brad Pitt or George Clooney, but he has a very likable persona that is charming and disarming. Only Lawrence Kasdan (I Love You to Death) has really been able to consistently utilize him to his full potential. The actor had just come off his Academy Award-winning turn in A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and with The January Man played a radically different character – an intelligent romantic as opposed to the outlandish buffoon as in Wanda.

When Kevin Kline read the screenplay for The January Man, he thought it would be fun to do. “It’s so outrageous, it’s got such panache. It’s not really a murder-mystery thriller, it’s about family and betrayal and the individual outside the system.” In addition, producer Norman Jewison described it as “a romantic comedy thriller.” The film was shot over ten weeks in Manhattan and Toronto. With a background in documentaries, director Pat O’Connor made sure the precinct featured prominently in the film looked authentic, right down to the layout and the way the extras looked. He hired Ed Zigo as a consultant. He was one of the police detectives who helped catch David Berkowitz a.k.a. the Son of Sam. Zigo took some of the cast and crew on tours of precincts in and around New York City. By all accounts, principal photography went smoothly so what went wrong? Perhaps something during the post-production phase? The most telling comment came from screenwriter John Patrick Shanley who saw three cuts of the film. “One time I saw it, I didn’t like it. One time I saw it and I really liked it. And then the third time I saw it I was confused and wasn’t sure how I felt.” Guess which version was released.

It is a gross understatement to say that critics savaged The January Man when it was released. Roger Ebert gave the film one out of four stars and wrote, “Nothing fits. Every role seems to have been faxed in from a different movie, and the actors are on such various planes of emotional intensity that sometimes you can catch them, right there on the screen, looking at each other in bewilderment.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Pat O'Connor, the director (Stars and Bars, A Month in the Country, Cal), has imposed no risible order on this minor chaos, nor has he been kind to Mr. Kline. He allows this very gifted comic actor to work so hard trying to be funny that one alternately sweats and cringes while watching him.” USA Today gave the film one out of four stars and Matt Roush felt that “the movie is all concept, with little ingenuity applied to the execution.” Time magazine gave the film a mixed review, addressing Shanley’s script: “His busy plotting may require a suspension of incredulity, but he is well served by good actors; by a director, Pat O'Connor, with a taste for the acrid flavors of big-city life; and by his own delight in human eccentricity.” In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, “Eliot called April the cruelest month, but then he hadn't seen The January Man. Billed as a mystery with romance and comedy, it is a damp sock of a movie that makes you wish for leap year.” The Globe and Mail’s Rick Groen wrote, “There are isolated scenes (bantering with his artsy sidekick, confronting an old flame, seducing a new) that sail along marvelously. But, each time, our raised hopes are quickly dashed, and apparent redemption ends as merely a momentary reprieve.” Newsweek magazine’s David Ansen wrote, “The whodunit is spectacularly implausible, the comedy misjudged, the romance forced.” Finally, in his review for the Los Angeles Times, Charles Champlin came the closest of anyone to giving the film a positive review when he wrote, “You are left with some genuine laughter, with a renewed awareness that Shanley is a special and considerable talent, and with an equally renewed feeling that nobody wins 'em all.”

Shanley casts a discerning eye upon the thriller genre without beating the viewer over the head with its conventions. Most thrillers are plot-driven but The January Man is inhabited by characters that you care about – you want to see Nick end up with Bernadette at the film’s conclusion. The film critiques the police thriller by presenting all of its conventions – the loose cannon cop who doesn’t play by the rules; the gruff boss who’s tired of his screwball antics; the ex-lover who creates romantic tension; tantalizing hints of political corruption; and the serial killer following a specific methodology – and then proceeds to subvert them by confounding our expectations, like the killer turning out to be a nobody just following his own sick impulses, or making the cop protagonist an artsy bohemian type. Even the climactic showdown is unusual – a messy, amusing sequence that goes on longer than you’d expect as Nick is portrayed as not the most adept at physical combat. The film’s intent is best summed up by its most memorable line of dialogue that Nick says to Christine when he realizes that he doesn’t love her anymore: “I loved an idea I had that looked like you.” It’s like Shanley loved an idea he had of a thriller that looked like the one that is the film. As if anticipating the critical shellacking his film was going to take upon its release, Shanley has Ed say at the end of the film, “The world’s either great or wretched, isn’t it? So many people are just finished.” He could so easily be talking about Hollywood and what I always assumed to be Shanley’s love/hate relationship with it.

This article was inspired by Mr. Peel's thoughtful examination of the film over at his blog.
 
*note: these fantastic screencaps were taken from the Movie Screenshots blog.

SOURCES

Alaton, Salem. “Punchin’, Kissin’ Writer Puts Pop in January Man.” Globe and Mail. January 13, 1989.

Pitt, David E. “The January Man Dossier: The Force is With It.” The New York Times. January 15, 1989.

DVD of the Week: Galaxy Quest: Deluxe Edition

When Galaxy Quest was released in 1999, it was a modest success but it certainly didn’t light the world on fire. Over the years, it has quietly amassed something of a cult following who delight in the film’s affectionately satirical jabs at the Star Trek franchise and its fans, specifically the first incarnation with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy. With this new Deluxe Edition DVD, it is about time for Galaxy Quest to be revisited and re-evaluated.

Like Star Trek, Galaxy Quest was a popular science fiction television program featuring the adventures of the “intrepid crew” of the NSEA Protector. There’s Connie Madison as played by Gwen DeMarco (Sigourney Weaver), the requisite eye candy, Laredo as played by Tommy Webber (Daryl Mitchell), the ship’s pilot, Dr. Lazarus as played by Alexander Dane (Alan Rickman), the very Mr. Spock-like alien adviser, Tech Sergeant Chip as played by Fred Kwan (Tony Shalhoub), the ship’s chief engineer, and Peter Quincy Taggart as played by Jason Nesmith (Tim Allen), the two-fisted captain.

The show has been over for years but the cast still frequents fan conventions, signing autographs and reliving their glory days, which has gotten to be a tedious chore. Nesmith has a raging ego and is something of a glory hound, much to the chagrin of his castmates, but when he overhears two non-fans slam him, the show and its fans, he suffers a mighty blow to his ego and begins to question his lot in life. Along come four aliens, Thermians from the Klaatu nebula who plead for his help. They have seen the show, or “historical documents” as they call it, and think that Nesmith and his cast are the real deal. They implore for his help against another alien race that is systematically hunting down and exterminating their race.

Nesmith is beamed aboard an actual working, full-blown version of his spacecraft from the show. Of course, he thinks that it’s just another publicity gig through the haze of a brutal hangover, that is, until he’s teleported back to Earth via a wormhole. Pretty soon, his disgruntled castmates are recruited along with Guy (Sam Rockwell), a glorified extra who played Crewman #6 in one episode of the show and was promptly killed off. Everyone is going to have to put aside their gripes with one another if they hope to survive and prevail.

Galaxy Quest does a spot-on job poking fun at the archetypes from the Star Trek with Tim Allen playing the William Shatner/James T. Kirk type, Alan Rickman playing the Leonard Nimoy/Spock type, and so on. The way the cast plays their respective roles not only relies on our knowledge of their Star Trek counterparts, but also the people who played them. That’s not to say that you have to be familiar with Star Trek to enjoy Galaxy Quest but it certainly helps and you will enjoy the film even more.

All of the cast do an excellent job, in particular Tony Shalhoub as the perpetually mellow engineer – his Zen-like reactions to the various dangers that he and his fellow actors face are hilarious – and Sam Rockwell as the freaked-out crewman who is convinced that that he’s going to be killed at any moment, just like on the show – he plays the character with the same kind of hilarious paranoia as Bill Paxton’s memorable character in Aliens (1986). Look closely and you’ll see The Office’s Rainn Wilson in a small role as a Thermian and Live Free and Die Hard’s (2007) Justin Long as an uber fan.

Galaxy Quest is a fun film that pays an affectionate tribute to shows like Star Trek while also gently poking fun at some of its clichés. It is also rather ironic that the film sends up a show known for its clunky special effects with its own state-of-the-art (at the time) visual effects by Stan Winston and Industrial Lights and Magic. Galaxy Quest starts off lampooning science fiction and its more obsessive fan culture but then halfway through celebrates it. The film is just flat-out entertaining and fun to watch, while managing to accomplish what many thought impossible – actually getting a good performance out of Tim Allen.

Special Features:

“Historical Documents: The Story of Galaxy Quest” is a retrospective making of featurette that has key cast and crew members reminiscing about the experience of working on the film. They take us through its origins and we see how the original concept was quite different but was tweaked over time. In a nice touch, the main cast members return and tell all kinds of filming anecdotes, clearly looking back at this project with genuine affection.

“Never Give Up, Never Surrender: The Intrepid Crew of the NSEA Protector” takes a look at the cast of Galaxy Quest and they talk about how they approached their respective roles. The filmmakers talk about why they cast the actors that are in the film and everyone dishes more wonderful stories.

“By Grabthar’s Hammer, What Amazing Effects” takes a look at the film’s snazzy visual effects. They had Stan Winston do the aliens while ILM do the special effects. Winston speaks about his creations in archival footage.

“Alien School: Creating the Thermian Race” examines the alien race that enlists the help of the Galaxy Quest crew. Actor Enrico Colantoni talks about how he came up with his character’s voice.

“Actors in Space” takes a look at how the cast made fun of their profession and their character archetypes.

“Sigourney Weaver Raps” features a taped message that she made for her agent’s birthday where the veteran actress raps with help from her fellow castmates.

Also included are eight deleted scenes that feature more with Fred Kwan as he tours the ship’s engineering section with his Zen-like calmness. There is a scene where the cast are shown their quarters based on their characters’ personalities from the show. And we also get more of them bickering among each other on the alien planet.

“Thermian Audio Track” allows you to watch the entire film dubbed in the alien language, which is actually pretty funny but I don’t know if you would ever watch it more than once.

Finally, there is a theatrical trailer.