Since I am apparently a couple of weeks too early to watch Austin's 4 million bats swarm at dusk, I went to my hotel room and paid to watch Star Trek: Nemesis. I didn't sleep through it entirely, but not for want of trying; the random zizzing of phasers kept waking me up.

It's predictable right from the first scene in which a bunch of Romulans get turned into stone and break into slo-mo pieces. And then there's the second scene in which the surprisingly unconvincing Patrick Stewart seems to be addressing a group of cadets but turns out to be - wait for it! - giving a wedding toast. Then there's the third scene in which I'm floating in a sac of warm fluid, happy until I hear a zizzing sound and wake up to realize I've just wasted $11.

The parts of the movie I actually saw seemed to combine the soporific exposition of the latest Star Wars movies with the plaster-of-paris thrills of a Flash Gordon epic. In fact, I wonder if this movie was meant as an homage to the Flashter; the chief baddy has a striking resemblance to Ming, the sets are similarly cheesy, and the action has all the excitement of a fistfight on Matlock.

It's a bad movie when the best acting comes from the android.