Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) [PILF-2787]The Movie:
It's no secret that the odd Star Trek films usually get a pretty harsh write up by most serious fans of the franchise. They're either too slow or too weird and usually fail to meet the high standards that other Star Trek films have set. Unfortunately, Star Trek Insurrection falls under the too slow category, and has a myriad of other problems to stack up on top of each other. This is by no means a good starting point if you've never seen a Star Trek film before. If you haven't, skip out on this review and go see a couple of the classics, like II, VI, or First Contact to get a good feel for how classic Trek works on the silver screen first.
Star Trek: Insurrection tells a fairly straight forward story: Corrupt admiral and evil aliens discover magical regenerative radiation and want to force the people off of the planet in order to retrieve it. Picard doesn't like that and intervenes, with his crew of legend backing him up in his attempt to stop the admiral's greedy quest. It's simple enough on the surface, and with a little script tightening and a little more revision could have been a much more theatrical endeavor. Instead, what we have is an extended episode of the Next Generation television program with a feature film budget, complete with a lackluster romance subplot, corny b**b jokes, and a villain that doesn't really inspire terror in the same way that previous Trek villains have.
Not only that, but it sort of feels like it's Star Trek's version of feeling bad for Americans forcing Native Americans off of their land, and could almost be seen as a weak form of atonement. But enough on that matter, there's only maybe a hint.
The acting is up to par with prior Next Generation efforts, I just think that after First Contact cranked things up to 11 with their battle against the Borg, audiences needed something with a little more depth and a similar pace to keep people interested. Insurrection really didn't do that for me in 2013, and I'm sure it didn't in 1998. But most of you probably already have an opinion on this film already, so let's get on to the meat and potatoes of this review.
The Video:
Released in 1999 by Paramount Home Video through CIC Video in Japan, Star Trek Insurrection looks spectacular on Laserdisc. Colors are vivid and bright, with plenty of detail when not stretched onto an HDTV. Letterboxed into a 2.35:1 aspect ratio frame, everything seems to be in order regarding this visual transfer according to my previous viewing. Special effects are a highlight, with plenty of starship battles, phaser shootouts, and other Star Treky special effects that are inherent to the franchise.
The Audio:
This version of the film contains the English soundtrack on the digital side, and a Japanese dub of the film on the analog soundtrack. For the purpose of this review, I viewed the English stereo soundtrack. One word can describe this soundtrack: booming. Remember my review of First Contact? Remember how I noted how it seemed to reserved, and never quite gave me the full force I thought the film deserved. This Dolby Surround encoded digital soundtrack is packed to the brim with natural bass and just doesn't stop. Whenever a ship pans across the screen, or a phaser impacts with a solid object, you feel it right in your gut. This is probably the most active stereo surround track I've ever had the pleasure of listening to. There is a bit of sound bleed across the front soundstage, but other than that I have no complaints whatsoever. Ships zoom in and out of frame, explosions whip across the screen with great panache. I can only offer one bit of advice: CRANK IT UP!
There are no supplemental extras included in this release of the film.
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