Professor Popinjay's Compendium of Perspicacity

A Non-review by Professor Popinjay

(1999)

This was a great movie. It was almost too great. Everyone I knew was nuts for this film. I saw it three times at the theatre with different groups of friends. After it came out on video I saw it at school, at multiple birthday parties, and on a trip to Washington to visit some friends up there. I was burnt out on this movie. I’m pretty sure I watched it once more with my ex and then never again.

But it was a great film. Zero complaints really.

I liked how intelligent and understanding of the situation the villain was. Not that he wasn’t malicious. He was still a villain. But he quickly figures out why the naïve Thermians have misplaced their trust in the terrestrial actors they chose as their champions. The scene where he makes the actors explain this to the Thermians is well written and well performed with a hilarious payoff.

The villain was useful as a catalyst for inspiring the characters to true heroism but I wish he was fleshed out just a bit more. Most of his scenes consisted of some stooge informing him of something and him responding indignantly with “WHAT!?!”

That happens at least twice, maybe a third? Basically short scenes to remind us a threat does exist in this film but we don’t have anything for him to do yet. I guess this constitutes as a complaint but it’s a small one. The movie is still great.

Galaxy Quest marks Alan Rickman moving from my subconscious and into the forefront of my recognition of him. In retrospect I would recall him from Die Hard and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves but I was just a tot when seeing these and my long-term memory was only fledgling then. In Galaxy Quest he furthered my love of the comedy-straight man, the sounding wall for the jokes with whom the audience finds relation. His deadpan expression is our own. It’s a difficult role to fill and only the greats pull it off so superbly as Rickman. Tommy Lee Jones is another. Jokes are great and all but the mere stoic unflinching presence of these actors make the jokes truly funny. Gonna miss this guy.

“By Grabthar’s hammer (sigh)… what a savings.”

Brilliant delivery.

Sorry, I won’t show the whole movie in gifs. I just love that line. I say it at work all the time and about 10% know it and finish the line for me with hearty guffaws. The other 90% thinks I’m a lunatic.

Sigourney Weaver seems a bit more profane than the director wanted her to be to get that PG rating. There’s an infamous scene where she comes upon a sort of gauntlet through which they are expected to traverse and at the site of its treacherous obstacles she clearly says the F-word but that is not at all what we hear. Personally I think it would be a merited and humorous usage at this point in the film but whatever. The PG rating made this more accessible.

This didn’t do too well in theaters but it was competing with Bicentennial Man, Interview with the Vampire, and Toy Story 2, to name just a few of the major blockbusters of November and December of 1999. That’s some steep competition and Tim Allen was in this AND Toy Story. Not a huge amount of people are going to see the goofy space comedy when Brad Pitt AND Tom Cruise are on the same screen. Nevertheless, I feel like this eventually generated such a following it really needs a sequel. I’m sure Alan Rickman would agree, the show must go on. Nevertheless, his absence does put a damper on any future production. A proper send off for his character would be most appropriate.