2 out of 5

Director: Jonathan Frakes

Burbles of promise are sprinkled throughout Insurrection, but odd editing cuts and something of a lack of immediate consequence keep the tension down and prevent the installment from feeling like more than an extended episode.  The original series obviously had its ups and down, but Next Generation had a tough go with its films, first having to shed the weight of what came before and then suffering from transitioning right from television, thus the actors don’t quite have full screen presence and thus can’t fill the expanded sets and budgets with a big screen feel.  Add to this the eye of Frakes’ as director – obviously a cast member and with directorial experience in television besides the previous installment – and without a big villain like the Borg to ratchet everything up…  Well, we get a good sci-fi premise and some pretty interesting antagonists, but it plods through its runtime.  Things get off to a pretty good start – Picard and crew are entertaining some alien oddities and there’s fun camaraderie amongst the crew and Stewart is in good humor.  It’s a confident scene, and recalls the good-natured openings of the latter half of the original series.  Elsewhere, on some random planet Data is running amuck shooting people.  He’s causing havok when the Enterprise hears of it and decides – against orders – to step in and settle the scene.  As an indication of the plotting hills that turn into sudden valleys, an exciting action sequence to capture Data leads to the whole mystery of his – gasp – Insurrection being solved lickety-split.  It’s not really the main crux of the story.  Which ends up involving secrets on that random planet, and some political mish-mash regarding those secrets, and for every question there’s an answer around the corner; every threat cuts to the resolution a few moments later.  The effects mostly hold up because there’s not really too much flash.  When the worst weapon the ‘enemy’ wields is a tagger that will beam you to their ship…  Well, Goldsmith the score all you want, but this would’ve been pitched better as a more speculative-sci-fi entry than lightweight version with action smoothed atop.  It’s watchable, and has some good chuckles, just lacking in oomph to support a title like ‘Insurrection.’