Who would win in a dick fight between Kirk and Picard? Who is Star Trek’s greatest ‘cum-sprinkler’? How much money would you accept to allow William Shatner to wee on you? These are just some of the questions posed in this feature-length attempt at transferring irreverent internet podcast Trekoff to the big screen.
Our hosts are Justin Timpane and Alexia Poe, whose modus operandi is clearly crazy! zany! despite Alexia constantly looking like she’s about to burst into tears. In fairness, this may be because she has to work with Justin. From the off, this comic leviathan sets out his stall; he likes Star Trek and he also likes the word ‘fuck’. He also asks a crucial metaphysical question to us, his audience. If they just, sort of, take their camera around and film some stuff with their “really talented” Trek fandom mates, will it count? Tragically, it appears no one was around to put him straight on this. What then follows is an unstructured, deeply unfunny mooch around a few rather sad-looking Trek conventions and amateur film and theatre sets with lots of nightclub-loo lewdness from Justin and contrived ‘kookiness’ from Alexia thrown in, all cut together by an editor with ADD. And it gets better; at every opportunity, bemused fans are forced to look into their camera and say “Trekoff Bitches!” as though the very lives of their children depend on it. Fellow podcasters, some looking slightly panicked at the prospect, are allowed to blurt out plugs for their own, no doubt equally crazy! zany! internet Trek efforts.
The naff self-promotion and frequent advertising of other podcasts is ultimately quite cringe-worthy and undermines any pretention this might have to be anything more than just an extended promo piece better suited to YouTube. The one constant of the film is the repeated cut-backs to our hosts reading out their flatlining “who would win a dick fight” posers to fellow fans. Apart from a few brief shots of a half empty room, said audience is worryingly out of sight. Perhaps next year we’ll get a special edition of Trekoff that reveals these poor souls were in fact lashed to their chairs with orders to laugh on cue by cosplaying Klingons holding electric cattle prods to their genitals?
Occasional detours towards conventional discussion of the merits of the various Star Trek series seem out of place in this towering smut-fest but we get them anyway (apparently Voyager was crap). The featured interview with the actor who played Dr Phlox in Enterprise (no, me neither) falls totally flat when the cat gets Justin’s legendary toilet-tongue so that he ends up just asking the poor guy a few lame, un-bitchy questions about being on the show. So what happened to “who would win a Phlox vs McCoy dick fight?”, Justin?
Ultimately Trekoff fails as a film because it isn’t really one at all. After suffering through this witless, self-defeating star crash, you’ll want these bitches to Trek right off through the nearest wormhole.
TREKOFF: THE MOTION PICTURE / DIRECTOR: JUSTIN TIMPANE / SCREENPLAY: ALEXIA POE, JUSTIN TIMPANE / STARRING: JUSTIN TIMPANE, ALEXIA POE, LYON BECKWTIH, DAVID BELT, JOHN BILLINGSLEY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Expected Review: 6 out of 10
Actual Rating:
