To bravely go where white men always do

I queued Galaxy Quest knowing only that it was a decently-reviewed Star Trek parody that might appeal to both me and the Old Man and having but the vaguest notion of the plot (aliens contact the cast of a cult scifi show thinking they're real and ask them to help out). About twenty minutes in, I said to myself, Oh God, this is another white saviour film. I had to shut down that thought altogether to keep watching. Thirty minutes in, I was struck by the near absence of female actors (the IMDb entry notes that the Alien Love Interest role was beefed up "after the producers noticed Sigourney Weaver was the only female main character"), and in order not to let that bother me I had to tell myself this was a conscious choice to reflect the sexism of the original source material.

So after walling off a good part of my critical brain, I managed to find it an amusing diversion (at least until the disc began skipping and I nearly threw something at the TV). There were cute touches, more fanboy injokes than I had any chance of ever getting, and a clutch of character actors I enjoy seeing. Chief among these is Enrico Colantoni (i.e. Veronica Mars' dad) whose performance as the leader of the alien race was about ten times better than it needed to be. I couldn't figure out why no one but him seemed to have the Thermians' melodically nonhuman intonation down pat, then I found out that he invented it himself.