Things I’ve Seen: Galaxy Quest

For the longest time, I have been wanting to go on a bender of movies and TV shows from my childhood. I began with a movie that I literally have not seen since it was in theaters in 1999: Galaxy Quest.

I can say this right off the bat without hesitation, this movie blew my mind with how many great actors it has. Not just the main cast of Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Tony Shalhoub, and the spectacular-as-always Sam Rockwell. But the side character actors like Enricho Colantoni, Rain Willson (yeah, he’s in it), and a very young Justin Long.

I got into a discussion about this movie before I decided to revisit it, and he said that the movie was primarily written with one major purpose: “Because people hated William Shatner.” I’m inclined to believe that a bit more. But the big thing I discovered watching this movie is that, in a way, it is actually kind of ground breaking. Not by film making or special effects, but as a piece of comedy, its actually a pretty clever film.

In the film, all of the cast members of the fictional TV series Galaxy Quest, seem jaded by there fame and that it is solely derived from the show with the acception of Tim Allen’s character, Jason Nesmith, a blatant caricature of Shatner’s charisma. Nesmith’s fellow cast members resent him for being so brash about his fame. Rickman’s character, a jaded British thesbian, cursed by the fame of his seemingly one memorable role in the eyes of his fans (a character that can clearly be attributed to a Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen). 

Then the gleefully ludicrous plot ensues of the cast of the show being summoned to help an endangered race of aliens, disguised as humans, defend themselves against an unbelievably angry warlord in search of a powerful artifact. Another thing can be said about the character actors that play the aliens in the film are hilariously good! And a perfact example is where the leader of the aliens, played by Enricho Colantoni, is being tortured and Tim Allen confesses that he is not really a captain of a space ship but an actor to played one. Colantoni then gives him a hilarious look of sadness but you can tell that he is still an alien attempting to convey his sadness in a way that a human would recognize because he’s a different freaking species.. It was a moment that really took me to a movie that could have been. Or at leas the movie that was almost bubbling at the surface.

But seriously, this movie is VERY much worth a once over if you haven’t seen it. That and Sam Rockwell is the “lightning in a bottle” for anything he is in! 

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