Star Trek at the IMAX sweeps me back to childhood delight

It's a hot June night in 1977. The 13-year-old Ellen, squirming with excitement, takes her place in the front row of the old (and now long disappeared) Creve Couer cinema with a bunch of school friends. It's a big event. Not only have they all been trusted to be on their own for a few hours without parental guidance, but they're about to drink in the phenomenon of the summer. The giant screen in front of them is one of the few left from the glory days of movies; somehow it has managed to avoid the subdivision into multiple, small viewing rooms that swept through American movie houses in the '70s.

The lights go down and that innovative text shimmers out of the darkness, towering above us, receding into the distance. A fairy tale begins. And then a starship rumbles over our heads, filling every bit of our line of sight given the size of the screen and our first row seats. Our jaws are slack with amazement, even as our little-girls' legs swing back and forth in excitement. This was Star Wars seen at its best: fresh, completely new and displayed with technology that enveloped us fully in the experience.

Most children of the '70s have a similar memory. The premier of Star Wars was, after all, one of the most iconic events of the decade for those too young to care about Watergate or the Vietnam War. I hadn't thought about that night for a long time, until this past weekend when Star Trek and London's IMAX theatre catapulted me back 32 years as effectively as if I'd stepped into some time-warping vortex.

I had never seen a general release film on an IMAX screen and had my misgivings. Was it worth the £6 or £8 you paid over a screening in your local cinema? The technology seemed to suit action sequences, but would simpler scenes be overwhelmed by the size? What, after all, was all the fuss about?

And then the lights went down, a starship slid over my head, my jaw went slack with amazement ... and I got it. Like a front row view of that old screen in Creve Couer, IMAX is so big that it strips out all peripheral vision. There is no sense of the edges of the screen. No dimly distracting glow of the exit signs or the side walls of the room. The steep camber of the seats means that most of your fellow viewers are out of your line of sight as well. In two hours I only noticed movement around me once, and that was when a woman in the row immediately in front of me left and returned. This complete absence of distraction means you are carried into the film in a far more compelling way than the normal experience. Add to this a film that benefits from a broad visual sweep, and you're in business.

In addition to being dazzled by the technology, I was delighted with the film. Its rip-roaring pace, uncomplicated story (bad guys v good guys, no grey here), clever but not particularly violent action and frequent bursts of humour make it an old fashioned adventure yarn highly reminiscent of the first Star Wars or the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. No surprise that my head strayed back to the '70s. The casting is brilliantly done, making it easy to imagine all of these characters maturing into their more familiar, mature versions in the television show. While you would need little knowledge of the Star Trek franchise to enjoy the film, knowing what the future holds for these characters is what drives a lot of the humour. And very clever much of it is, too.

Star Trek is a classic summer adventure film that sends you out of the Cinema grinning from ear to ear. Don't miss it on a big screen. The bigger, the better.