Dakota Fanning Goes On Star Trek Adventure In Streaming Comedy That Will Make You Cry
It’s hard to imagine Dakota Fanning in the Star Trek universe (although we’d kill to have her get a cameo in Strange New Worlds). However, we got the next best thing in 2017 with the Fanning-starring dramedy Please Stand By. It’s the kind of movie that will make you laugh and cry (sometimes at the same time), and you can now stream this ambitious indie film on Hulu.
Dakota Fanning plays a huge Star Trek fan pursuing her dream in Please Stand By, now available to stream on Hulu.
What’s the premise of the movie? Dakota Fanning plays a young autistic woman who brightens up her days living in a San Francisco group home by fixating on Star Trek, her one true passion. Eventually, Paramount holds a screenwriting contest, and Fanning’s character gets ready to mail in her mammoth 450-page Trek script in the hopes of winning the $100,000 prize.
When she misses her chance to mail it, she decides to deliver the script herself, resulting in a Quixotic quest that we do not doubt Mr. Spock would have deemed “fascinating.”
Please Stand By is a dramedy in the truest sense of the word, and most of what will make you alternate between laughing and crying comes from Dakota Fanning’s powerhouse performance. As a young autistic woman, she is particularly vulnerable to scams and swindles, and the movie offers an unflinching look at the many dangers she faces once she steps outside of the familiar environment of the group home.
But the movie finds a lot of comedy in her character’s love of Star Trek, leading to occasional broad comedy scenes (our favorite involves a police officer who wins her trust by speaking to her in Klingon).
Star Trek infuses the entire film in ways both subtle and obvious, and it’s difficult not to view Dakota Fanning’s self-appointed mission as her own Away Team trip to unfamiliar lands. Much like Kirk or Picard before her, she must leave an area where she is safe and knows everyone around her and venture into a strange new world full of exotic characters and bizarre situations.
She’s not literally going where “no one has gone before,” of course, but she’s going where she hasn’t gone before, and the film offers a very wholesome theme that this kind of inner journey is just as valid as external ones.
Star Trek infuses the entire film in ways both subtle and obvious, and it’s difficult not to view Dakota Fanning’s self-appointed mission as her own Away Team trip to unfamiliar lands.
And speaking as huge Star Trek nerds, we were pleasantly surprised by what a love letter this movie ended up being to the franchise started by Gene Roddenberry. In the hands of a different writer, Dakota Fanning’s character could have been a mean-spirited satire of Star Trek fans as awkward nerds who don’t really understand anything outside their favorite fictional world.
Fortunately, she comes across as someone who is both earnest and guileless, and we are left with the impression that it’s better to be a pure-hearted fan that doesn’t understand the world than to be like the honorless petaQs who take advantage of her.
In the hands of director Ben Lewin and screenwriter Michael Golamco, Please Stand By delivers the kind of heartwarming story that makes us smile through our tears.
Critics didn’t fully know what to think of it: on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie currently has a 56 percent rating from critics, who collectively deemed that Dakota Fanning gives it enough of a Star Trek focus to put a new spin on familiar coming-of-age beats. Audiences, meanwhile, gave the film a 68 percent rating, and that number is likely to go up now that more fans can stream the movie on Hulu.
Please Stand By is a dramedy in the truest sense of the word, and most of what will make you alternate between laughing and crying comes from Dakota Fanning’s powerhouse performance.
Interestingly, the movie has a fairly explicit connection to Star Trek: Dakota Fanning is joined by Alice Eve, who plays her sister. As you may remember (though if you blocked it out, we wouldn’t blame you), Eve played Carol Marcus in the J.J. Abrams film Star Trek Into Darkness. Actor and Comedian Patton Oswalt is also in the film, and five years after this movie was released, he played a minor Trek role by lending his voice to an episode of Picard.
Long story, not very short, Please Stand By is a great film filled with wonderful actors and headlined by what may be a career-best performance from Dakota Fanning. It’s simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, and it has enough of a geek focus to keep even the most jaded Star Trek fans entertained. And if you’d like to experience it yourself, no transporter is necessary… pick up your remote and stream the film on Hulu today.
