I reeaaally loved this movie! The first Star Trek movie I wouldn't change at all. Awesome, ridiculous story, great character moments, no boring parts, a lot of good humor,...
Yes, the plot about whales is kooky af but goddammit the ride is just so undeniably fun - plus, I'm a sucker for both time travel stories and fish-out-of-water humour. Obviously, for those Trek fans of a more serious disposition, they will probably find this a bit too lightweight but it's one of my favourite Trek movie entries.
A nice family film with some laughs. It's the best Star Trek film according to critics. According to fans Wrath of Khan is the best and they aren't wrong.
[8.0/10] Here’s a dirty little secret -- I never really cared for the “let’s go back in time” episodes of The Original Series. Whether it’s the nonsensical sneakery of “Tomorrow Is Yesterday” (which Star Trek IV borrows its time-travel method from) or the perturbing backdoor pilot of “Assignment: Earth”, or the half-baked jaunt through history in “All Our Yesterdays”, they’re consistently weaker outings for the show. (I’m even colder on “The City at the Edge of Forever” than most.) All of these episodes involve undercooked adventures that make salad out of the time travel concept and hope to coast on the coolness and/or cost savings of seeing our heroes in the present.
But the one exception to that is “A Piece of the Action”, more often referred to as “that 1920s gangster episode.” Technically, it’s not a time travel episode, merely one of those “my gosh, we’ve stumbled onto a planet that’s suspiciously like Earth at this point in our history” episodes that were even more prevalent, but it fits the spirit. And what makes “A Piece of the Action” so much more enjoyable than those other installments is its tone.
It goes for straight comedy amid the adventure in a way those other episodes don’t. It gives Kirk and Spock a chance to pretend to be gangsters themselves, to use silly slang, and find the humor in these futuristic spacemen being subject to the whims and wiles of some locals who don’t know quite who they’re messing with. It gives Shatner a chance to play a comic lead rather than a dramatic one, and most of all, it finds the fun in the scenario, for everyone involved.
It’s that same spirit that makes Star Trek IV such an enjoyable installment of the franchise when there’s so much working against it. It features the best overall character work of the films so far; it finds the most levity and humor in the situation, and it allows the lead actor to play to his strengths in a way that both fits the character who strolled across the bridge in 1966 and endears the viewer to the version walking the streets of San Francisco in 1986. The laughs, the chances for almost every character to have a moment in the sun, make all the ridiculousness of the time travel plot and aquatic mammal macguffins an afterthought.
Make no mistake, Star Trek IV has an utterly ridiculous plot. I can be summed up as “our heroes have to go back in time to fetch some whales who can talk to a gigantic flying cigarette butt that’s threatening to destroy the Earth.” Bones is right when he calls it an insane idea. The movie has the good sense to handwave it as a one-in-a-million shot, but the only chance the former and future crew of the Enterprise has to save the day. But in truth, it’s an easy excuse to plop Kirk and company into the present day and let the hijinks ensue.
Damn if it doesn’t work like gangbusters though! The reason is the same one that so many outlandish episode of the 1960s T.V. show worked – if you can get the characters right, if you can make their interactions believable and endearing, and if you can pepper in enough humor and charm, the audience will easily forgive the fact that, as here, your story makes no sense.
That’s aided by the nonchalant tone the film takes with respect to time travel. Sure, it takes it seriously enough for Spock to have meaningful concerns about computing the right calculations to get back and forth (and it involves a strange, impressionistic sequence that feels a bit out of place). But for the most part, the film takes its clock-shifting moves in stride. Kirk sells the antique glasses he received from Bones at a 1980s pawn shop, and after some brief questioning by Spock, shrugs and reasons that they’ll make it back to him in the future. Scotty doesn’t agonize over giving the formula for transparent aluminum to a local manufacturer, figuring maybe that’s how it happened in the first place. With so many “butterfly effect” films about time travel, it’s refreshing and effective that The Voyage Home takes a relaxed attitude.
It’s also refreshing that every member of the cast gets something meaningful to do here. While, as is unfortunately typical, Uhura is rather underserved, each member of the main Enterprise crew has a part to play in the plan. Uhura and Chekov collect the photons from “nuclear wessels” in an amusing “fish out of water” fashion. Sulu gets to nab a helicopter and show how malleable his flying skills are. And Bones and Scotty manage to con their way into a Plexiglas factory and barter their way for the materials necessary to construct a whale tank on the Enterprise.
That just leaves Kirk and Spock, who are in charge of whale reconnaissance. That part of the mission has them crossing paths with Gillian (Catherine Hicks, ensuring that both parents from 7th Heaven make it into the Star Trek movies), a whale biologist who’s fiercely protective of George and Gracie, the two humpback whales in her care.
It’s here that the film truly shines. After three movies worth of stories where Kirk and Spock were understandably separated or stilted, Star Trek IV remembers what a great comic duo they make. Spock’s deadpan responses to Kirk’s attempts to be sly, Kirk’s off-the-cuff explanations for his friend’s odd behavior, and the two of them debating whether or not Spock likes Italian food all master the ringer/straight man dynamic between them that sustained for than a few episodes of TOS.
(While Spock has a pretty perfunctory arc about embracing the human side of his recovery and being willing to make “a good guess,” his best moments have him playing up the Vulcan oddball attempting to fit in among humans even further removed from his experience.)
For that matter, Kirk and Gillian have great chemistry, with the pairing allowing Shatner to play the amusing, almost romcom-esque romantic lead rather than the overly heartstruck and dramatic one. Hicks slips perfectly into the expert comic patter of Shatner and Nimoy, and makes for an enjoyable third banana in their efforts to rescue Chekov or save a couple of whales.
The film isn’t subtle about using those whales to drive home its environmental message. While turning whalers into the bad guys of the film, and having the ominous probe symbolize a supernatural, almost divine punishment for humanity’s treatment of endangered species, makes clear what point the Star Trek team is trying to make, it’s mostly set dressing for a rollicking, utterly charming adventure.
So much of the charm derives from the film’s humorous bent, one that, like “A Piece of the Action”, finds the fun in the “wagon train to the stars” concept behind the shows. Shatner gets to play the wry, smiling conman that was often Kirk’s best look; Bones gets to be his best, Oscar the Grouch-esque self, slinging sarcastic remarks and witty barbs, and the whole gang gets to take part.
It’s fitting that the penultimate scene of the film features all the main characters laughing, smiling, and splashing around with one another in the San Francisco Bay. While the slow zoom across the old crew, a glimpse at a new version of the Enterprise, and an affirmation that they’re the best at what they do is heartening, it’s that scene of the group of them living and laughing it up in the water that best captures what makes Star Trek IV so great.
It’s the same thing that made “A Piece of the Action” great – letting things be light, but not dull; heightened, but not too serious; and silly but too much fun for anyone to care. The Voyage Home is a film with a truly ridiculous premise, but one that finds its footing in its comic charms and great character moments, and doesn’t stop running until it gets its feet wet.
The best delivery The protagonists travel to our days.
The best delivery. The protagonists travel to the present.
Theme- 8/10
Rewatchibility- 8.5/10
Acting- 8/10
Kinematography- 7.5/10
Time- 7.5/10
Total - 39.5/5 = 7.9
How on Earth can they save the future? Whales... two whales. That's what this movie has to work with, it's not a spoiler but it certainly is convoluted. Despite that, however, this movie clicks. As I sit here and think on it too, this may be my favorite Star Trek movie I've seen. It has a nice blend of heart and humor, it has stakes, and it even has a bit of environmental commentary to boot. The entire crew is top-notch here and Bones may perhaps have some of the best lines in this whole thing. While I can get behind heavy dramatic outings for Trek like Wrath and some of the great TOS episodes, it's when the franchise decides to let loose and have fun that I tend to enjoy myself more and want to return and give it another watch. While this is technically the finale of a three-film story arc, it does suffice as a standalone if one so chooses and one should.
Ok, but how cool is that lady?
Seriously, she hitched a ride to the 23rd century leaving everything behind without even thinking about it and then she ditched the guys she came with to find out what she could like and be useful with after a two-centuries jump?! JUST. AWESOME.
This is probably the least noteworthy detail in the movie but I was so impressed I had to write about it somewhere, don't mind me!
It's the eco-friendly Star Trek movie! Kirk Spock and the rest of the crew travel back in time to retrieve some now extinct humpback whales who are needed to save Earth four hundred years in the future. A probe from deep space is accidentally destroying Earth as it stops to check in with the whales. Actually this is a fun movie with a decidedly lighter tone than the first three movies. Nimoy is hilarious as an out-of-touch Spock who can't grasp the slang of 20th Century Earth. Kirk has a good time with the colorful language himself. This movie could be better except that the Dr. Taylor character played by Catherine Hicks isn't very likeable. The special effects aren't the best even by 1980's standards.
The first good Star Trek flick in my opinion. The SFX are outdated nowadays but still bearable and the acting is finally decent. Additionally I really liked the plot of the flick!
From the opening score, it is immediately clear that the tone of this film is going to be vastly different from the previous two entries and the serious tone is replaced with a far more irreverent take on the Star Trek mythos. Whilst some of the humour may make fun of the characters, it helps that the "fish-out-of-water" vignettes are also very funny especially those involving Spock. This is also one of the few Trek films that gives all of the cast a part to play in the plot rather than just Kirk, Spock and McCoy. The film ties up all the loose ends left from the previous films and would have served as a nice coda to the original series had this been the last one. It is a shame that the environmental message is laid on a little too thickly but great that a bit of fun has been brought into the series after two such serious instalments.
This was a lot of fun and I liked the time travel fish out of water aspect.
I'm a big ST Fan. So my score maybe bias. 7 of 10 IMO.
A lot of people consider this to be the best of the Star Trek movies. I do not count myself among them. It´s not that I dislike it in general it´s just a lot of little things I personally didn´t like that add up. The idea of again having an alien probe coming to earth. The method how they bring the message in this part feels like delivered with a hammer. Normally I percieved Star Trek to be more subtle in that regard.
I´m all for humor in a movie and there were some really great funny scenes but all in all it´s too much. And than there is the part of messing around with the past.
Time travel is always a great tool in SF but I often wondered if there where budgetry reasons involved. After all it is less expensive putting the movie in the (then) present. Alltogether as I mentioned not bad in general, but it always felt to me being just a movie and not a Star Trek movie.
The plot is strangely imbalanced. There's this gigantic threat to Earth. And it's the Enterprise's crew time to shine. Now, after we have learned more fascinating stuff about Half-Vulcans, the band of brothers is back and I really like the comradeship that was lacking in movie III due to the "absence" of Captain Spock. It's really a nice idea that the crew is only consisting of the core crew of the "late" Enterprise.
Then the imbalance starts: it's all getting a bit too non-scientific and too comedy like. Why not travel to the past? Easy right? I hated this in Assignment: Earth and I hate it now. How does this work? The rest can only be described as a comedy.
Still, as a comedy, I like this movie. It created many memorable scenes. Spock diving! It also explores some of the core ideas of Sci-Fi: how would people react when confronted with future versions of mankind (and vice versa) and how far did future humankind really evolve? We have seen very similar stories in other installments of the franchise, like when the Voyager crew visited Sarah Silverman. I recently watched Crocodile Dundee. The vibe is the same: people unaccustomed to contemporary city life try to fit in. And that's a lot of fun. Even the eco-stance seems to be as relevant today as it was back then when the movie was released.
The last part is a bit more serious again. Again, I hate that there's no explanation for the time travel. Plus, I think it's very strange that they don't care to explain what this alien probe really was.
This time the whales save us
Shout by 1010011011BlockedParent2014-06-04T16:04:26Z— updated 2016-12-24T11:19:08Z
The only thing I wondered was, what the hell happened to the prime directive? For non star trek fans this movie is totally accessible, because there is no need what so ever to be familiar with the characters. It's all self-explanatory.
P.S. the prime directive is that starfleet personnel should not interfere with a less developed civilizations let alone alter the timeline for a whole universe.
It would help if you have lived in the time portraited in this film (earth of the twentiest century). The film has some cold war humor in it.
Chekov asking a cop on the street: " Excuse me sir. Could you direct me to the naval base Alameda. It's where they keep the nuclear vessels. NUCLEAR VESSELS ! I'm looking for the nuclear vessels. Could you tell me where the nuclear vessels are? "