Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

The Voyage Home is pure, joyful cinema. Read full review

This is easily the most absurd of the "Star Trek" stories - and yet, oddly enough, it is also the best, the funniest and the most enjoyable in simple human terms. I'm relieved that nothing like restraint or common sense stood in their way. Read full review

It crackles with comedy, but it's no space cartoon, nor self-lampoon. It's a happy, heartfelt chapter that reunites the original cast with the original TV format, shying away from the cold and epic scale of the preceding movie adventures. Read full review

Here's a science fiction movie where the special effects are in the background. And the effect is, well, rather special. Read full review

It has an irresistibly sure touch, an easy command of its audience. It hits the right buttons, strikes the right chords, plays with our expectations with the right blend of savvy, guile and imagination. [26 Nov. 1986]

Kirk & Co return to present-day San Francisco to save the whales in the most enjoyable film of the series so far, also returning to the simplistic morality-play format that gave the original TV series its strength. Read full review

Nimoy directs the comedy in a loose, relaxed, almost sketch-like manner, but when the film moves into its multiple-cliffhanger climax, he's still able to generate some genuine dash and tension. The only drawback is that the Enterprise gang is starting to look a little long in the tooth for such strenuous action. Read full review

Star Trek IV, while not a superior effort, is an effective and enjoyable sample of entertainment -- not good science fiction, but a lightweight piece of comic fantasy utilizing characters so familiar that they feel like old friends. Read full review

By far the silliest and most self-mocking of the series, with the interplay between Spock and Kirk veering somewhere between Hope and Crosby and Cheech and Chong, but also one of the most successful. Read full review

The technical minutiae, the solemn silliness and the preachy tone occasionally sounded here...are all essential to the Star Trek mystique. Whatever it is, it seems durable beyond anyone's wildest dreams. And Mr. Nimoy, by injecting some extra levity this time, has done a great deal to assure the series' longevity. Read full review

The latest Star Trek is the most down-to-earth, and certainly the funniest, movie in the series, further evidence of the show's amazing durability. [1 Dec. 1986, p.89]

Latest excursion is warmer, wittier, more socially relevant and truer to its TV origins than prior odysseys.

The ecological message is commendable, and there are some amusing situations with the space travelers in contemporary scenes. Nimoy's direction keeps a lively pace and the special effects are state of the art, as always. [08 Jan 1987]

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home is the dopiest and most congenial in the series, an indication that the producers have at last acknowledged that what they're dealing with is not science fiction or adventure, but a kind of cosmic fluke. [27 Nov. 1986, p.F1]

William Shatner's Kirk is less stoic here than in III--he's pleasantly daffy. The others in the crew also have an easy, parodistic tone. But the picture doesn't have much beyond the interplay among them and the jokey scenes in San Francisco.

There's an easy familiarity and charm in the creased, middle-aged faces of Nimoy, Shatner and DeForest Kelly (the perpetually irascible Dr. McCoy), all of whom now play their parts with an ever-present twinkle. Their behavior rarely has anything to do with the motives provided by the plot; rather, they wear their characters like old habits, as they boldly go where they've always gone before. [26 Nov. 1986, p.C5]

I suspect the unconverted will want to be beamed up pronto. Read full review