2002, 1 hr 55 min., Rated PG-13 for sci-fi action violence and peril and a scene of sexual content.�Dir: Stuart Baird. Cast: Patrick Stewart (Captain Jean-Luc Picard), Jonathan Frakes (Commander William T. Riker), Brent Spiner (Lt. Commander Data), LeVar Burton (Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge), Michael Dorn (Lt. Commander Worf), Gates McFadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher), Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi), Tom Hardy (Praetor Shinzon), Ron Perlman (Reman Viceroy), Dina Meyer (Commander Donatra), Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan), Kate Mulgrew (Admiral Kathryn Janeway).

I hope you can understand just how crucial it is for a new Star Trek flick to be good. If not, then you live in a bizarre world I don�t want to be part of. You don�t watch the original in syndication, and don�t record reruns on TNN of The Next Generation. If I said that a successful meeting was like Darmok and Jilad at Tanagra, you�d stare at me with a look of pity. But I�d feel superior. I used to draw the Enterprise of the original series on the carport walls (if you didn't know it then, Dad, then "Hi!"), didn't attend a party in college so I could watch the two-hour finale of The Next Generation, and even saw every episode of Voyager.

Unfortunately, neither me nor my opposite self are upset that Nemesis is �a generation�s final journey.� It seems impossible for opposites to agree, but you don�t need an anomaly in the space/time continuum to understand that The Next Generation flicks are too much miss and not enough hit. These guys were great for a decade on the small screen, but on the big screen it becomes glaringly apparent that they�re without any of the charm of Kirk & crew, who were worth watching even when the movie wasn't great. Yes, even the dreaded "God" movie, which I really have no problem with, and it has nothing to do with Uhura dancing near-naked in the moonlight on the sand dune.

Star Trek: Nemesis is dark, droll, unconvincing and without anything to distinguish itself among the franchise's successful movie history. Disappointing, for sure. It�s as if the entire movie takes place in a worm hole (slow and tough to decipher what�s happening), stuck in the cuteness of Data, the gooey of Troi (who at least looks amazing in that dress at the beginning) and the intellectual mumbo-jumbo of Captain Picard�s quandary.

Maybe I�m just upset that these guys never made a movie revolving around Q, or that while I looked forward to a plot that was supposed to heavily involve the Romulans, didn�t. Instead, we get plodding, occasional action that - once again - involves the near destruction of the Enterprise, and riddles on top of riddles about a clone with a sob story. That is, when the crew wasn�t talking in gibberish, with technical gobbledygook filling in for actual explanations of what was going on.

Blah, blah, blah. Talk, talk, talk. Kirk is a man of action, Picard a man of inaction. Kirk has battle maneuvers named after himself, Picard has plaster heads in his office. He nearly costs the Federation its existence because he can�t grasp that he�s being used by a very evil man with no moral boundaries and diabolical revenge on his mind with weapons of mass destruction at his fingertips. Hey Picard, stop with the inner struggle, forget the �be a better man� speech and do your daggum duty and rid the universe of the menace! (Hmmm, I wonder if that makes me politically conservative? Who knows?) Even four hundred years in the future it takes an android to convince the captain that it�s life experience, not DNA, that shapes your actions in this situation.

Still, the most frustrating part is that there's this whole sub-subplot of Troi that serves no purpose other than they couldn't figure out how the Enterprise crew could get out of the ultimate situation. It HAD to be the last choice the writers could come up with, and they still beat themselves against the bulkhead of the set every day for keeping it in.

OK, and during a shootout in the ship�s passageway, I couldn�t help but recite the entire scene in Star Wars when Luke, Leia, Chewie and Solo end up diving in the garbage smasher. I half-expected the Reman Viceroy to tell Commander Riker, �What a wonderful smell you�ve discovered!� I would�ve given anything to hear Warf tell Riker, �I�ve got a bad feeling about this,� then yell, �Into the garbage chute, flyboy.� (Hey, if you can�t love being a dork, you aren�t living)

You know, I didn�t dislike the film nearly as much as it sounds, but all these gripes are legitimate, and for a Trek fan disappointing in their entirety. Sure, I�ll still buy it since it�s my sworn duty to own all the Trek films and the best episodes, but that doesn�t mean I won�t giggle when listening to the commentary on the DVD explaining how they came up with such silly dark matter.

The verdict:

p.s. Can someone please confirm or deny that in the very first scene if that is indeed Wesley Crusher (Wil Wheaton) next to his mom the Doc.