Director: Jack Bennett
Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Tim Allen, Sam Rockwell, Justin Long
Have I Seen it Before: Nope. It had been on my list of things to watch on Amazon Prime for a while, though.
Did I Like It: It’s a mostly fine film, of a piece with other fan celebration documentaries like Back in Time (2015), Ghostheads (2016), or What We Left Behind (2019). The stars are interviewed. The fans are interviewed. Hopefully a couple of things the viewer didn’t previously know are examined, or at least examined more deeply than they were previously known. Everyone who liked the original thing comes away with a nice warm feeling. It isn’t the cutting edge of documentary, but I can easily think of worse ways to spend an hour and a half.
I had known at one point that the late, great, Harold Ramis had once been on board to direct the film but dropped out. He made Analyze This (1999), a film that would have likely collapsed in on itself without Ramis, so everything worked out. I had no clue that it was largely over the casting of Allen, and it was nice to hear that there were no harsh feelings over the issue, just an honest disagreement.
The debate over the casting of Jason Nesmith/Commander Taggart is the most revelatory information. Ramis’ number one choice of Kevin Kline would have been interesting, as he is a comedic actor of the first order, but his on screen persona has always felt far away from the Shatner energy that Allen would be charged with channeling. Bruce Willis and/or Alec Baldwin might have worked, but only if they believed in the movie. Either one of the sleep walking through the film wouldn’t have worked, and the whole film would probably be unwatchable in the here and now if Mel Gibson fought the rock monster.
The one failing of the film is that it didn’t take a deeper dive in the one subject this film could touch on, and we aren’t likely to see any elaboration on anywhere else. Just before the inimitable Alan Rickman passed away, production was going full speed ahead on a sequel miniseries for Amazon Prime. They talk about briefly, and with appropriate sadness, but What We Left Behind creates hypothetical future material for that series out of nothing. This film doesn’t touch on where the characters ended up and what they would be doing now, and there were even scripts written on that project. It’s a missed opportunity in an otherwise perfectly fine experience.