Jenn & I just watched Star Trek — Nemesis tonight. We were both rather unimpressed. Between the bad directing, poor writing, and sub-par acting, it just didn’t work for us.

For starters, the bridge felt stiff and cluttered. Forget the warm sparseness of the bridge on the Enterprise D (for those of you not familiar with the various ships to bear the name Enterprise, that’s the one used in all the Next Gen episodes and the film Generations); the bridge here was darker, less open, and usually photographed with much closer shots. The new uniforms didn’t contribute anything beneficial (although they didn’t present a problem in First Contact).

The acting also felt somewhat stiff. Usually, the main cast of TNG does a fine job, but in this film the characters seemed a bit cardboard-ish at times. Geordi, too, didn’t seem right, and it wasn’t just the ocular implants. He should have shaved the beard.

Further, it seemed that those involved in its creation seemed to forget that this is Star Trek, not Star Wars. There were lots of fights, a car chase, some very Star Wars-esque action in the jeffries tubes (including a fall virtually identical to Luke’s in Empire Strikes Back), and some of the dialog between Picard and Shizon was distractingly reminiscent of Luke and Vader.

Back on the bad directing front, I didn’t care for the camera work in the desert car chase early in the film. Specifically, a lot of the footage looked washed out; there’s little excuse for that in today’s world of digitally recoloring film. Perhaps they were attempting to demonstrate the intense sunlight of the environment, but it didn’t work for me at all.

Accodring to Memory Alpha’s article on the film (spoiler alert, but you may not mind this film being spoiled), Levar Burton (Geordi) did not have a high opinion of the film, and Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi) indicated that the director never watched any TNG episodes.

In closing, I don’t mind having watched it merely to have checked off more Trek (the only film I have yet to see is Insurrection). On its own, however, Nemesis is really a rather poor film, particularly for the Star Trek franchise. If you aren’t trying to watch all of them, don’t waste your time or movie rental $$ (we got it from the library, so no funds wasted here).