"Could they be the miners?" "Sure, they're like three years old." "MINERS, not minors!" "You lost me."

I watched Galaxy Quest last night. I love that movie. If you have not seen the show, I'll give you a quick run-down: It is basically a spoof of the Star Trek phenomenon. Tim Allen plays a man who starred in a Star Trek-ish show (Galaxy Quest) twenty years ago, and now he spends his time going around to various conventions and appearances as the captain of this space ship. The rest of the crew does so as well, but they are all less enthusiastic about it. For the most part they are all sick of it, but Tim Allen absolutely revels in the spotlight, almost acting like he really was the captain of a spaceship. The rest of the cast essentially hates him, and he doesn't really give much regard for their thoughts and feelings either.
And then one day some real aliens come and take them aboard their ship. They received the transmission of the TV show and had mistaken it for historical documents. They built a ship that looked exactly like the one from the TV show and want Tim to negotiate with their most hated villain.
Once he figures out that the ship is real he tries to convince the rest of the cast to go back with him. They decline at first, but then decide to go with him because they think he's talking about another paying job. So they all end up on the real space ship and they have to help these aliens defeat their enemy (a very nasty looking creature named Sarris).
So that's the premise of the movie. What makes it so funny is how the various characters are played. There's one character, the engineer (named Fred Kwan) who is so completely easy-going that nothing bothers him at all. In order to get to the ship a thousand light years away, they stand on a platform and covered with goo, and then the platform goes hurtling through space (and through a black hole) to the ship. All of them land on the ship and are in shock and completely unable to react at all. They just stand in one spot, shaking with fear. But when Fred comes through (he was a second behind because he was buying some snacks from a vending machine) he just smiles and says "that was a hell of a thing" and then he goes with Tim Allen to view the rest of the ship, casually asking "what's wrong with them?" before walking away. That's about when one of the others comes out of shock enough to scream at the top of his lungs. All throughout the movie he is completly unflappable. When the ship gets shot to pieces, he calls from the engineering room and repeats some highly technical jargon about what is wrong with the ship and how to fix it. He obviously has no idea what he is talking aobut because he is just an actor who doesn't actually know anything about a space-faring vehicle. When he is done giving the suggestion of the rest of the alien engineers, Tim, who is acting as the captain of the ship, agrees with what they say. So Fred turns around and says "that's right again. come on, group hug". I could go on about him, he slays me. His delivery was absolutely perfect.
Tim Allen, for his part, was pretty great as well. He is much like Fred in that nothing seems to bother him, but he is absolutely enthusiastic about everything. It doesn't even phase him that they are an unfathomable distance away from Earth on a real spaceship. He just figures they'll be able to operate it without problem.
The last character I want to mention is Guy. At the beginning of the movie, Guy is just the emcee who introduces them at the opening convention. Then we find out that he played the part of "Crewman #6" in the last season, in an episode where he died to show that the situation was serious. He doesn't even have a last name. Somehow he manages to go along with them into space and spends most of the movie worrying that he is going to die. He is the one who screams like a little girl when they first get on the ship. He's really funny as well.
Anyway, it's a fun movie, and shame on you if you haven't seen it yet.