Fascinating, Captain

I haven't seen the new Star Trek movie, and probably won't until it hits cable, so I can't say whether or not I agree with Jennifer Weiner's take on it. But it certainly is--well, y'know. Excerpted:

Honestly, I didn't have a problem until about midway through the film...at which point I realized that every single lady on screen was either a mother, a ho, or an intergalactic hood ornament.

We begin with mama Kirk. As the film opens, she screams and grunts her way through labor, pops out young James T., bids her doomed husband a weepy farewell, and is never seen or heard from again. How does she feel when her reckless son runs off to join Starfleet? We don't know. The movie doesn't ask.

Finally, there's Uhura...and what Abrams and company do with the Enterprise's communications officer will not be warming the cockles of any feminist hearts.

We are told, rather than shown, that Uhura is an extraordinarily capable linguist. We are told, rather than shown, that she's intercepted an important transmission, the plot device that jump-starts the film's action...as soon as Kirk tells Captain Pike about it. But Uhura's primary function isn't professional. Her job, in this brave new universe, is to look cute in a red dress, and to humanize (and by "humanize" I mean "mack on") her coolly logical, eminently reasonable mate.

In other words, she's Michelle Obama in outer space.