TheRetroCritic

Ah Star Trek V ... Just thinking back to it is a joy! This William Shatner-directed outing for the Star Trek gang sees interesting ideas being merged with some truly silly ones to create what is quite probably the goofiest non-whale-related movie of the franchise but also one of the most entertaining and memorable. The film opens on a desert planet where a prophetic Vulcan called Sybok appears to have the power to heal others of their fears. It's a promising start and just when it looks like this might develop into a really cool plot involving magical Vulcans and stuff, we meet the Star Trek (old) boys who are on shore leave just bumming around, being wacky. You've got Kirk climbing mountains, super-Spock showing off his brand new rocket-boots and McCoy joining both of them for a drink and a "Row Row Your Boat" sing-along over a camp fire. It's cute and you do feel like these guys really have become a family but it's pretty cartoonish considering

For me, this movie is why the whole odd numbers curse thing just doesn't work. Do people really love The Wrath Of Khan and not like The Search For Spock ?  Illogical doesn't begin to describe it... Yes The Wrath Of Khan was a good, fun movie but so is this one! I mean, no Star Trek movie is perfect and neither is The Search For Spock: some of the humour in it is a bit corny, the whole Spock-is-inside-McCoy thing is needlessly delayed (though Deforest Kelley acting nuts is ALWAYS worth it) and Leonard Nimoy's Spock isn't physically in the film for most of it. That said, there's plenty of great, epic stuff in the film. For one thing, there's plenty of action as Klingons finally take centre stage on the big-screen and follow-up on the whole using-Genesis-as-a-weapon thing and one of them is played by Christopher Lloyd, which is awesome in itself. Plus the actual search for Spock, besides being a mission I can totally get behind, is handled really well