Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984, Leonard Nimoy)

As a direct sequel to the legendary "The Wrath of Khan", "The Search for Spock", though far from the greatness of the preceding film, is more than serviceable, and is overall quite a good emotional story which wraps up the loose ends from "Khan" admirably well, though clumsily on occasion. Oddly enough for a movie called "The Search for Spock", one of the film's biggest problems is a distinct lack of Spock. Without him the chemistry of the TOS crew is hurt quite a bit.

Also, the film does lack its own identity a bit, feeling most often like the direct sequel to "The Wrath of Khan" which it is. This isn't really a problem, it just means that the film holds almost no appeal to those who haven't seen "The Wrath of Khan", and to those of us who have seen "The Wrath of Khan" (and many times), the choice between the two if we only have time to sit down and watch one of them is painfully obvious. It really is mostly a sort of bridge between "The Wrath of Khan" and "The Voyage Home".

The film's greatest flaw is the entire Klingon plot. I was never a big fan of the Klingons which I know I'm in a minority on but here they seemed especially annoying because they are thrown into the mix basically to add conflict and action to something which could have been just a straight character piece. Indeed, the only aspect of "The Search for Spock" aside from reliably good performances from the original cast which is more than merely competent (a description which applies to Nimoy's direction, most of the effects work considering when it was made and the budget, all the supporting cast, the overall story, and several other aspects of the film) is the screenwriter Harve Benett's excellent characterization and the several good character moments sprinkled throughout the film, my favorite being Bones telling a not-yet-fully-restored Spock that he misses him.

The film could have been great if it had stuck to a simple character-based story. Instead the film aims to be, in its relatively short running time, a full-on space opera. The stuff on Genesis and with the Klingons is not really as good as it could've been and the Klingons should probably have been left out altogether but overall the film is a competent, and occasionally excellent, follow-up to "The Wrath of Khan", but it lacks individual identity a bit.