My Review of "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier"

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier came out in 1989. This is kind of a lost movie in some ways. There are a lot of things to like about this movie but it stumbles a bit. Then again you're coming back from a time travel movie so the expectations shouldn't have been too high for this one in the first place.

This movie starts off with a scene that I think Thor: Love and Thunder stole scene for scene from. There is a guy in the middle of a desert and a mystical character is approaching him. He looks desolate, dehydrated, starving and out of hope. This mysterious character arrives and instead of starting a fight he instead relieves this desert character of his personal pain. In doing so he dedicates his life to this mysterious character named Sybok.

Then this movie moves over to Earth. I swear the Mission Impossible series stole Kirk's opening but did it much better than this movie. It's kind of funny to see Kirk attempting to scale a cliff when it's obviously a stunt double. The body proportions are totally off and it doesn't look anything like Kirk. I forgot how corny and bad the special effects can be with these Star Trek movies.

Kirk happens to be on a camping trip with Spock and Bones. They fall into the same old shenanigans that we're used to. It's a little more quirky than usual but those that love the Kirk, Spock and Bones dynamics will love this interaction. This will continue throughout the movie.

Meanwhile the rest of the crew is either repairing the incredibly broken down Enterprise. I don't even know how they were able to get the ship rebuilt in the first place since they did mention that the ship was to be discontinued probably 2 movies ago. Again they have a skeleton crew on board the ship.

As the crew gets sorted out Sybok has created a following so large that it becomes an army. Their army basically overruns this small town. In that town are 3 important delegates, one Romulan, one Klingon and one Earthling. They become hostages so that Sybok can commandeer a starship.

Of course Kirk and the crew have to rescue these delegates despite their Starship situation. In doing so a Klingon ship discovers Kirks whereabouts and decide to pursue Kirk. Kirk and Klingons have not been the best of friends since Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

A whole series of space drama begins when they all arrive on Sybok's planet. It's all fun and games when they try to save the hostages. Oh my goodness I forgot about the infamous dance scene in this movie. Good on them for being so progressive to have Uhura, a middle aged woman, to be doing some sort of sexual dance to distract a crowd of men. It was cringey when I saw it long ago and it's still cringey when I saw it recently.

There are a ton of really awkward and on the nose situations that happen in this movie. Some of the jokes feel quite forced and in very unfortunate scenes. I think this movie kind of really lost its legs closer the end of this movie as well as the pacing was really off. Making it feel like kind of a slog.

They do go into some interesting existential questions but they seemed more like a forethought rather than the prime focus of this movie. That goes the same with a lot of the deeper thoughts that they go through in this movie. All of them seemed to have potential but they're all side notes in conversations rather than significant parts of this movie.

Overall, this was kind of a bust of a movie. It's really unfortunate because I was looking forward to it. I guess there's a reason why I kind of forgot about this movie after so long. It's not very memorable besides certain awkward scenes and that's not a good thing. I unfortunately have to give this movie a 5.5 out of 10. I guess you can kind of skip this movie if you're going through a Star Trek marathon...