On this week's Reel Genius we explore the final frontier of Star Trek Beyond, the third installment of the JJ Abrams reboot of the beloved sci-fi franchise. Robert Wilonsky, whose Trekkie bona fides outrank mine, loved it. I found it overly busy and cumbersome in the middle, though not without its charms.
In other critical circles, The New New York Times' A.O. Scott summed up my tepid reaction pretty well: "It should have been called Star Trek Within in honor of its determination to color inside the lines, obeying the ironclad conventions of brand and genre."
Others, including Time's Stephanie Zacharek, were a little kinder. She dug into the franchise's sociology: "The whole point of any Star Trek exercise is that people of different temperaments, beliefs and skin tones must learn to work together. The actors here take that rather skeletal mandate and make it gleam."
Go make up your own mind this weekend. And please, live long and prosper.
