"To boldly go where no man has gone before" is a tagline that could scupper any director's chances, and I'm sorry to report that the new JJ Abrams attempt isn't the first Star Trek film to feature a Muppets-style singalong with a human-Klingon-Romulan chorus line. What it is is a hugely efficient, fast-paced reworking with a spry turn by Chris Pine as James T Kirk – reminiscent of cocky, pre-Angelina Brad Pitt – that has 24-carat star quality.

Abrams zeroes straight in to the heart of the teen demographic, pitching his version as Star Trek 90210, the young crew meeting mostly at Starfleet Academy, Kirk nursing an asteroid-sized attitude problem after the death of his heroic captain father and Spock (Zachary Quinto) struggling with his mixed-race heritage. There are some toe-curling childhood scenes – including an all-too-human episode of Vulcan playground bullying – and lots of soppy 21st-century homilies about realising one's true self. You imagine a look very like Spock's frowning bemusement coming over the screenwriters' faces every time it came to write a scene requiring our Earth emotions.

But it doesn't matter at all: these moments are quickly forgotten at Abrams's confident warp speed, so firmly set in breezy comic mode that even the appearance of the Romulans – restyled as a tribe of space Maoris led by Eric Bana, in a gargantuan, spiny craft that looks like Grace Jones's headgear has been finally launched into space – can't stop the party. Added to the mood are the film's fabulous looks: especially in a stand-out sequence in which Kirk, Sulu (John Cho) and an ominously unnamed colleague who's obviously not seen Galaxy Quest must sky-dive from orbit on to a small platform suspended 2km above the surface of Vulcan.

What comes as the real surprise amid the multimillion-dollar storm are the gameness of the performances. Cho and Anton Yelchin, as Chekhov, fit in seamlessly in small roles; Simon Pegg's Montgomery Scott, accompanied by a comedy cornflake-faced alien sidekick, feels like he's been beamed in from Red Dwarf, but has the required impact; Zoe Saldana, as Uhura, does her best in an underwritten role. Perhaps Quinto is a little colourless, but he couldn't exactly play Spock like Withnail, and he is the only junior cast member saddled with his elder counterpart, Leonard Nimoy, hanging around. But Karl Urban's unshaven McCoy and, especially, Pine's Kirk, are unqualified successes: the latter ditching the infamous Shatner cadences but channelling the twinkly roguishness spot-on. Combined, they, and this new voyage, have real optimistic force and uplift.