Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

You know, the one with the whales.

Voyage Home is my personal favorite Star Trek film, and my pick for the best science fiction film of all time. It's just a great film, in my opinion, full of heart, wit, and noble intentions. IT's also really funny and entertaining as hell.

There's very little to say. This isn't the most beloved film among Trekkies (even though it should be), but it's probably the most popular among, well, everybody else. It's the one with the whales. Everybody saw this movie. Everybody liked this movie.

I can only think of three things to nit pick about this movie:

#1. Catherine Hicks isn't a very good actress, or at least her performance in this movie is really lackluster. She's likable and cute, but her performance is really hokey and overly sentimental. Also, it doesn't help that most of her dialogue isn't all that well written. Her character wasn't as well developed as it should've been, making her more of a plot device than anything else. But she wasn't so bad she brought the film down. She was no Jar Jar Binks or Willie Scott.

#2. The time travel sequence doesn't really work, in my opinion. In fact, it doesn't work at all. IT makes no sense. I get what they were going for, but it was a little too metaphysical. Considering how many times we've watched Trek characters travel back and forth through time with little incident, it was strange seeing that extended dream-like interlude in this film. But at least it was cool looking.

#3. Here's a really petty nit pick... but in the scene at the restaurant, why does the waiter arrive with the pizza and the check at the same time? From a film making point of view, I understand that they were trying to simplify things, since the characters suddenly decided to leave, and having the check allowed for a funny exchange of dialogue about the lack of money in the future, but it always bugs me when I rewatch it. After she said the pizza was going to have to be to go, couldn't the waiter have pulled the check out of his pocket? Why was he already holding it?

Other than that, this is a perfect film, in my opinion, and worthy ending to the superb Star Trek trilogy. Hold on, because things are about to get a lot worse.