Rating: 
Summary: Why WOULD God need a Starship?
Review: A Clintonian Vulcan (he feels your pain), in exile for rejecting logic and embracing emotion, commandeers the Starship Enterprise and shanghai's its famous crew in his quest to find God at the center of the galaxy. The corniest of the TREK flicks, and the one that marks the directorial debut of star William Shatner (surely a coincidence--NOT).This film has some pretty good special effects, adequate acting, and some of TREK's greatest comic moments--e.g., Scotty bellows something about knowing the ship like back of his hand, then promptly gets KO'd when he bumps into the bulkhead--but the plot is inordinately inane. For the most part, only die-hard Trekkers will want this flick in their DVD collections.
Rating: 
Summary: The Final Frontier for Star Trek humor
Review: Considered almost universally (no pun intended) the worst of all Trek movies, it may not be the best, but in my own opinion it is certainly not the worst. I won't give spoilers on the plot, but its one that is certainly appropriate for Star Trek. The banter and humor between Kirk, Spock and McCoy is top-notch and the speical effects are adequate. Overall, an above-average entry into the Trek movie collection.
Rating: 
Summary: "Star Trek V" is a great entry no matter what!!!
Review: For me, I personally loved this entry in the series because it goes back to the magic of the original show in a way. Finally, you have Kirk demoted from Admiral ("The Voyage Home") to Captain, and he gets to live out another adventure with his crew as captain of the Enterprise. You bring back Jerry Goldsmith ("The Motion Picture") to compose a masterpiece of all Trek musicals. And you give the characters more roles than they did in the last films. It truly goes back to the spirit of the show. After all, one of the dillemas with movie adaptions is that they tend to take away that magic. William Shatner does recapture that magic with this film which was his directorial debut. He brings in an interesting story in terms making you wonder if God could really exist out there in space. In a way the whole movie is about understanding each other, and our place in the universe. Although it does mimic the first movie, it does have a fast-paced feel, and it makes up for the first film in more special ways than one. Fun and enjoyable no matter what.
Rating:
Summary: The ONLY good Star Trek film!
Review: (...) as far as I'm concerned, this is the ONLY Star Trek movie worth watching. Star Trek IV came close (but no cigar), but Star Trek V knocks the ball out of the park, it's the ONLY Star Trek movie that connects with what made the original series so good.
Rating: 
Summary: Cap'tin!, I canna take much more!
Review: So much potential, wasted. This could've been a really good film if only. If only they'd thrown out everything, or at least almost everything. Here's a few of things that will take away from your enjoyment of Star Trek 5, LAMBADA, I mean "The Final Frontier" The special effects are sub par. There's a few shots of the Enterprise near the beginning that aren't bad, particularly the beauty shot of the ship and the moon, nice touch. But unfortunately, it's one of the few actual shots of the Enterprise you will see in ST5. Here's a hint for the producers of Trek. Fans like the ship, we like to see the ship, please include exterior shots of the ship in your films whenever possible. Other effects include the horrible "planet" beyond the "great effects barrier" that looks more like a visual depiction of Vicks Vapor-action than a planet. Really all the effects seem quite crude in comparison to other trek films; maybe they blew the budget getting Shatner to direct. The story lacks a villain. Sybok, the happy Vulcan, is about as close as you'll get to one here. The problem with Sybok is, he really isn't dangerous and you'll find his laugh intoxicating. There's also a stupid sub-plot with a rogue Klingon; Captain Krunch or something like that. He's about as threatening as a french poodle with the hairstyle to match. Cap'n Krunch's main purpose in this movie seems to be to blast an ancient Voyager-style space probe(like V'Ger from ST:TMP) into bits. Maybe in a future film a Voyager-style probe will be kind enough to blast an ancient copy of ST5 into dust. There's an even more stupid sub, sub-plot involving the Klingon William Conrad, the henchman from Titanic and some Romulan Babe on planet Nimrod-3 which looks a lot like Tatooine. Its all pretty lame! And just who are these people? This movie was made in 1989, which means the original series had been out of production for 20 YEARS when this came out. Did the writers never watch this show? Hardly any of the characters in Star Trek 5 even remotely resemble the original series characters. Examples: A) - Capt. Kirk is now into rock climbing (something never before mentioned). He's annoyed that Starfleet would call him to deal with an alien threat, completely contradicting already established movies where Kirk couldn't wait to get out there and kick some alien can! And Kirk's relationship to Spock and Bones seems more like Moe's relationship to Larry and Curly in this movie. B) - Spock now has a brother, Sybok, who he never saw fit to mention before. Spock chooses not to shoot Sybok and save the ship. So what happened? Did the emotionless Mr. Spock have a bad feeling about shooting an intruder? Is this the same Spock that would have let his own father die (in "Journey to Babel") rather than relinquish the helm to Scotty for a few hours? I guess we could blame this on that "being dead and brought back to life thing." I choose to blame Shatner instead. C) - Scotty, what the hell is your deal. You can repair the transporter when the damn Doomsday Machine is blastin' chunks outta the hull, but you can't fix it in dry-dock? And what about all the other malfunctions on board? Mr. Scott is supposed to be the "miracle worker", yet he can't even keep the Captain's palm pilot from self-destructing. Scotty! Quit sniffin' around Uhura and get to work! D) - Sulu, Uhura and Chekov seem a bit different too, but maybe that's because they actually get to do something in this film, which I guess is good except there is a weird and disturbing Scotty/Uhura romance hinted at and possibly even a Sulu/Chekov! (what are they doing out in the woods alone?) Dr. McCoy seems cranky, which is at least normal behavior for him. E) - The U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-A: WHAT THE HELL? Somehow the whole ship undergoes a facelift from the last movie, the bridge is completely changed and somebody has added like a hundred extra decks and steering wheel, and nothing works right. To quote Kirk "Starfleet has a lot of nerve sending us out in this condition..." Damn straight! What happened? Did they buy the parts from some Ferengi huckster? Finally the whole plot is just bloody dull! Sybok the happy Vulcan is looking for the Supreme Being (God) on planet Shakaree, the previously mentioned Vicks Vapor-Action planet of heavenly lint. Sybok and his followers take over the Enterprise with relative ease, then sets a course for the "great big effect barrier" Kirk, Spock, and McCoy eventually make nice with him, all go down to planet Vapor-rub, they find out that "God" is really a hairy thunderer in a Santa suit, Sybok croaks everybody is happy, the end. SNORE! It's just all really sad. It's as though no one making Star Trek 5 had ever seen Star Trek before, there's no clever new gadgets, no socially relevant commentary, no sir, NO NOTHING! No vision of the future to make us gasp in awe, even the heavenly lint ball planet looks nasty. This place is supposed to look like Heaven, but it looks more like Death Valley shot through a pair of Ray-Bans. Fortunately, this film can be missed without missing anything. It adds nothing to the Star Trek mythos and should be written off as Kirk's fever dream. I'm a trekkie, and I even own a copy of this movie, but Star Trek 5: The Final Frontier is neither final, nor frontier. It's just bad.
Rating:
Summary: This movie needs work. BAD.
Review: I know my rating and my title are contradictory, but anyways... I'll start with saying that I had to see this movie 3 times at 2 year intervals before I could bring myself to watch it again. I watched it for the third time ever about 2 months ago, then I saw it again, then again, then again... Every time I saw it, I did notice that some very cheaply fabricated character dialogue stained this movie bad. One of the particular instances that come to mind is this once-ever tryst between Scotty and Uhura, which comes off as two old fogies fooling around in off hours. Eww. Another bad element in this movie is the special effects. DUH. I will definitely not have any protest to the fact that this movie has the absolutely worst special effects in the whole movie series. Completely redoing the VFX alone would bring the average opinion of this movie up from 25%-ish to 70%+. Most ppl are unaware of the fact that the bad special effects almost completely give the movie a very cheesy atmosphere. Some of the movies strong points, however are as follows: The best soundtrack in the series, with the soundtrack in Star Trek: The Motion Picture (incidentally, done by the same guy) following in second, an EXTREMELY heart touching scene that is second only to Spock's Death in ST2, and a general principle that reflects the old series, rather than Bill Shatner trying to ego his way into directorhood by screwing with the format. I plan to start a petition pending seeing the anticipated "Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Director's Edition" to the people at Paramount or whoever myself and others deem capable of starting a similar project; We want them to re-work this movie.
Rating:
Summary: The one awful ST movie
Review: Hopefully, this will remain as the one bust in the ST movie catalog. William Shatner directs an ST movie about religion, fate and the search for God. Whoa! Talk about a recipe for disaster! First of all, letting Shatner sit in the director's chair is about as swell an idea as hiring Roseanne Bar sing the national anthem. Not only is the plot of this movie ridiculous, but it is one of the most sloppy films I have ever seen. It appears to have been edited with a chain-saw. This whole dream of William Shatner directs William Shatner in William Shatner's first feature film "The Final Frontier," co-written by William Shatner, with creative input by William Shatner.........well, all of this nonsense turned into what you could expect: a farce. Besides the terrible direction, it seemed like the rest of our beloved Enterprise crew was only half-hearted about being involved with this debacle. The usually reliable Leonard Nimoy seemed that he could not wait for the film to end so that he could return to Vulcan (and hide his ears in shame?). The humor in the film, something which was pulled off with such natural continuity in ST IV, was nothing but slap-stick one-liners more befitting a poor man's "Airplane!". Even the special effects, which are usually more than noteworthy in ST endeavors, are very poor & look like they are out of the 1960s. There is a grand total of one scene that is worth seeing. When Kirk approaches his ship, he recites a few lines from John Masefield's "Sea Fever" (a great poem, if you ever get the chance to read it). Other than that, I wish the Klingons would have given this movie the photon-torpedo treatment long before it ever made it to the big screen.
Rating:
Summary: Campy fun! Sure it sucks, but you'll love it...
Review: Watch this after having a couple of homebrews with your nerdy friends...Jeer, throw stuff at the TV during the really bad parts and have a great time on your way to the "Great Barrier."
Rating:
Summary: Not The Best Star Trek movie but not the worst movie ever!
Review: This was not the best Star Trek movie of the film series but not the worst movie ever! Give William Shatner some credit for trying his best to make his directorial debut a good movie! The reason he failed to execute this film was because Paramount Pictures gave him a small movie budget to work with. Also in 1989, Paramount was undergoing the Hollywood Writer Strike! The most successful and known screenwriters and Special Effects designers were not able to contribute to Star Trek V due to the problems they had with Paramount Pictures. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier's failure at the Box office was not the fault of William Shatner. It was just the wrong time and wrong idea. The story was about Sybok, Vulcan renegade who is in search to find Heaven and God. This Vulcan renegade pacifist wanted to steal the Enterprise, kidnap the crew, and travel to the center of the galaxy where the Great Barrier is hidden. Sybok(Lawerance Luckabill) thinks that God is hidden within side the Great Barrier. The story was very hard to believe by Star Trek fans. This was one reason why the movie did not succeed. If William Shatner had more time to direct this film plus having more experienced Screenwriters to work with, It would have been as successful as Leonard Nimoy's directorial debut in Star Trek III. The good sides, the film has a great music score by Jerry Goldsmith who also did theme music for STar Trek: the Next Generation and Star Trek the Motion Picture! Plus, William Shatner captured the essence of the 60's TV show. The weak special effects and the special relationships between the characters like Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are what made Star Trek so popular. This is not the Best example of Star Trek but not the worst movie of all time! Buy it! It will bring you back memories of a wonderful Sci-fi Era!
Rating:
Summary: Thank God, there was a Star Trek VI!
Review: Fortunately, for the original crew of the starship Enterprise, there was one more adventure left in the form of the superb "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country." Had the fifth in the series been the final bow for Kirk and company, it would have been an embarrassing end for all concerned. The film, which has a few memorable exchanges and explorations of character (particularly a look at the past of Spock and McCoy, respectively) is weighted down by some truly sad scenes: Kirk making a foolish attempt at rock climbing; Uhura doing a "striptease" in the attempt to divert the minions of Sybok; the cheesy special effects (Where was ILM on this one?); the entire crew looking rather "bloated" in newly-designed "jumpsuits"; Kirk, McCoy, and Spock escaping incarceration via rocket shoes; a Klingon crew that is as skilled as the guys on the old "McHale's Navy" television show; and the appearance of "God" that might make one consider atheism. As a Trekker, I really wanted to like the film. Subsequent viewings have not improved my opinion. I think I may have been too kind in giving the film three stars.
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