Movie Review: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Rate This Article
What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that this
Star Trek movie is the most farcical of the big-screen
series. As much comedy as adventure derives from the journey of
the Starfleet heroes to 1986 Earth, and the relative rudeness
and local color they encounter in San Francisco. There are
instances of comical swearing and drug references.
Families can talk about the movie's emphasis on comedy, and the culture-shock of the future space travelers in (more or less) present-day Earth society. What aspects of this world do you think would bewilder visitors from tomorrow? Also, what eco-messages do you find in the movie?
Common Sense Media Review
Fans like to say STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME successfully
captured the same lighthearted spirit of some of the classic
1960s TV episodes of
Star
Trek that aimed for whimsical humor instead of ray-gun
battles with Klingons and interplanetary intrigue. Think "The
Trouble with Tribbles," for instance. The movie is delightfully
entertaining, and you don't have to have seen the predecessor
Star
Trek III: The Search for Spock
to enjoy it -- though knowing the backstory helps
considerably, as circumstances of the two movies start out
tightly interwoven.
The core crew of the now-destroyed starship Enterprise are seen at the beginning in exile on the planet Vulcan, having rescued a returned-from-the-dead Mr. Spock ( Leonard Nimoy, who also directed), and committing multiple offenses against Starfleet in the process.
Voting unanimously to return to Earth and face justice, they depart in their captured Klingon ship, only to find their home planet besieged by a bizarre, enigmatic alien space probe (another one? Wasn't that the plot of the original Star Trek: The Motion Picture ?) that's battering Earth through storms and energy drains. The heroes figure out that the probe is trying to contact humpback whales, described as an intelligent species which, by the 23rd century, have been long extinct, hunted to their doom by greedy humans. Admiral Kirk ( William Shatner), resurrecting an idea from the TV series that Starfleet alumni know how to navigate time as well as space, orders the crew to time-warp back to the 20th century, where humpback whales can be found.
The bulk of the fun -- and it is, much of the time, played for breezy laughs, despite the mortal peril for the Earth -- centers on the super-competent 23rd-century visitors' awkwardness fitting into 1986 Earth society. There, a surprisingly naïve Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and other icons have to contend with such otherworldly concepts as money, rude people, profanity, exact change on buses, and impish Mr. Chekhov perceived as a Soviet agent after he's assigned to go to a U.S. Navy yard and seek out the nuclear "wessels" for a fuel component.
This cast has seldom been more charming (and that's saying a lot), and there's a running undercurrent about Spock, still partially amnesiac and disoriented after his more-than-near-death experience, gradually re-learning his ties of friendship with his shipmates, and learning to balance logic with emotion. Sure, the special effects are good too (note the use of early CGI to simulate the time warp), but it's the beloved characterizations of Star Trek that power the "wessel," and that set it apart from the vast majority of screen science-fiction that's all about the gadgets, rockets, aliens, and monster costumes.
There have been other movies -- and Star Trek episodes -- about time-travel (and whales in jeopardy). Some in which characters revisit the world of yesterday to save the future include Millennium, the R-rated 12 Monkeys , and the entire Back to the Future series.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
