Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

How sad is this?

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

Just an enjoyable romp that never takes itself too seriously, gives each cast member moments and something to do, has a message, and manages to capture the spirit of the original show maybe better than any other of the films. Such a fun movie that you can overlook a few issues (like the fact that they left technology in the past... whoops!)

This is likely the Star Trek film with the widest appeal, in that it's essentially a fish-out-of-water comedy with a little sci-fi thrown in. An unknown ship is approaching earth, broadcasting an indecipherable message, and destroying all planets in it's wake. The Enterprise crew figures out that the message is whale sounds, except that whales have been extinct for hundreds of years, so there's no one left to answer the ship. This leads our intrepid crew to slingshot around the sun to travel back in time in order to bring a whale to the future to save future earth. Once in modern day San Francisco (or 1980s San Francisco), the crew has a series of humorous encounters with cars, money, and punk rockers, while trying to secure a whale. It's all quite funny and entertaining, but it's not very "Trek." The characters are all still the characters we know and love, but the story is pretty much "Crocodile Dundee" "Coming to America" or "The Out-of-Towners" except with the Star Trek crew out of their element. But not to be too dismissive, it is a lot of fun and is never boring, which is more than can be said of most Star Trek films, which tend to be pretty hit-or-miss. The film also get bonus points for including my favorite Go-Go, Jane Wiedlin as an Alien Communications Officer.

This is the hardest Star Trek movie for me to review, so bear with me.On the one hand, it is forced in its social-message earnestness. The apocalyptic set-up takes too long and is rather lame besides. The hug-it-out ending is the kind of thing earnest old Gene Roddenberry might have rejected as too cloying by half.On the other, it's the most enjoyably comic entry in the "Star Trek" canon barring "A Piece Of The Action" and maybe "Galaxy Quest," showcasing some of the best cast chemistry among The Original Series regulars.In short, I find it somewhat tedious on the whole and very entertaining in much of its parts, especially the 65-minute middle section which brings James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and his crew to San Francisco in 1986.I'd rather not waste time setting the film up. The film itself does too much of that, and it only falters in the explanation. Something about a mysterious craft that has the power of shutting down all power in and around the planet Earth. It's sending out unrecognizable lines of communication; Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) recognizes humpback whalesong. Since humpbacks are extinct in the 23rd century, Spock determines the best way to handle this is find some whales in Earth's past that can respond and send the craft back from whence it came.It's a weak device, throwing up a lot of unanswered questions (what became of all those unfortunate crewpeople on ships that we see in the opening drifting powerless into space's vaccuum?) All you are supposed to care about are the usual suspects, Kirk and the gang of the late U. S. S. Enterprise, now aboard a stolen Klingon bird-of- prey. If you can, good for you.Give Nimoy a lot of credit. I don't like the script he helped write, but as director he makes it work by building up his fellow actors from the TV show. Anyone notice how Spock never gets the last word this time in his exchanges with Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley)? Instead, he's the butt of much of the humor, as when he strains futilely to inject profanity in his exchanges in order to fit in on 20th-century Earth."He's not exactly working on all thrusters," McCoy reminds Kirk.A silly-looking Spock is not what you expect, but watching him try to drop "hells" and "damns" with unbecoming Vulcan gravity is a joy of repeated viewings.I can do without the save-the-whales message being troweled on like mortar. Kirk's female contact on 20th century Earth has a "I Heart Whales" bumper sticker, and there's a long section showcasing whale slaughter in gory detail. I don't need the violins as I tuck into my whale steak and heat my cottage with blubber oil.Yet "Star Trek" did inject social commentary a lot in its TV period, along with some fairly comic outings. In both cases, "Star Trek IV" serves as a pleasant return to the well, reminding us why it was so enjoyable for so long. Humor comes across to some degree in other outings, but here it becomes more central than usual. Not all the jokes are great, but the delivery is solid. Even Chekov (Walter Koenig) gets some overdue attention as an object of last-minute rescue.Who doesn't get a kick out of watching Kirk and Spock negotiate mass transit? Non-fans will enjoy the digs, while fans who balance their loyalty to the franchise with an appreciation for popular-if-dated entertainment tropes will find this a worthwhile if minor addition to the mythos that is Trek.

I don't think this really contains spoilers but I checked it just in case someone thinks it did.To give out my perspective I must first point out that I am a fan boy and tend to rank all things Trek a bit better than they may be in reality. That said, even my loving of Trek cannot save this tire fire of a movie. Everything about the movie is just wrong. It feels like a cheesy '70's TV movie. From the terrible TV type music to the end credits run over images of the movie you just wasted your time watching. The plot is monumentally absurd and the actors are trying way too hard to be funny. Sorry, it's not their fault. It was the writers. They wanted a light movie, which is fine. But if you want light, do light in a clever way. Like David Gerald did in his "Trouble With Tribbles" script from the TV show. Shatner showed he had great comic timing when given good material. He and Nimoy just looked sad the entire movie. Nimoy I think was going with the fish-out-of-water with the time travel idea but it just didn't work because it required our normally well educated and diplomatic crew to behave like idiots who had no idea where they were. As a result, save for a precious few moments none of the crew behaved like their normal selves. I could write essays about the pathetic and obvious plot holes (like the alien probe in the opening scene that was so advanced it turns off every device withing a certain radius, completely ignores an obvious advanced species on the planet they are heading for just so they can see why the sounds coming from that planet stopped) but that is actually not the worst part of the movie. Many Trek films have a plot hole here and there but that does not take away from the enjoyment of the story. Not so here. In the end, the movie came across as a souped up version of the Trek Episode "Let That be Your Last Battlefield" (One with the half black and half white races in the series' most obvious allegory and was actually better than this movie was) rather than an original and light hearted fun time it was obviously aiming for. Bottom line... This wasn't just a terrible movie in it's own right. It's a terrible Trek movie too.