Mission to Mars Review
by Michael Redman (redman AT indepen DOT com)June 7th, 2000
Maybe this mission should have been scrubbed
Mission To Mars
*1/2 (out of ****)
A film review by Michael Redman
Copyright 2000 by Michael Redman
There's a world of difference between artists and technicians. The artist has a vision to create something new. He may not do it well, it might be sloppy, but it's something you've never seen before. A good technician can make it look good, but without direction from his own inner artist or someone else, it's going to be just a Xerox. Obviously successful films need both skills.
Brian De Palma is a masterful technician. He's spent his career copying others, most notably Hitchcock. He usually knows exactly what to do to make a scene work, but only because he has learned it by rote. Aside from rare flashes of originality, his films are often soul-dead.
In De Palma's latest, he turns his attention to Stanley Kubrick. To tell the truth, I enjoyed portions of this movie, but I liked it a lot better over 30 years ago when it was called "2001". I enjoyed it even more when it was titled "Close Encounters".
NASA has set its sights for Mars. When the first crew meets with disaster, a rescue mission is sent to the red planet. They don't do so well either, but eventually meet up the lone surviving astronaut-gone-Rasta and solve the mysteries of the universe. And it's all so boring.
There are so many scenes that just don't work, it's difficult to begin. When the first crew is a few feet away from a raging massive upside-down Martian tornado (which looks remarkably like a sandworm from "Dune") destroying everything in its path, they just hang out watching. Error. The most interesting character (and that's not saying much) is killed off. Error. The alien is laughable. Error. The rest of the characters are the dullest people imaginable. Error.
There's some nice eyecandy. The face on Mars, which turns out to be a giant metal Thai Buddha head, looks cool. A three-dimensional holographic planetarium is more fun to watch than anything at Disney World. Maneuvering in space suits outside the ship seems realistic.
But there's so much more that feels as if we've been there before. From "2001", there's the rotating space station, the blinding white room. >From "Close Encounters", they solve a sound puzzle and play it to the aliens. The list goes on.
The actors are mostly mobile wooden statues. Even Gary Sinise and Tim Robbins can't muster enough emotion to convince us they are breathing. No one seems to care about anything that happens. You won't either.
The absolutely worst sin is the blatant product placement as Dr. Pepper, with a 20 foot tall logo, saves the day. They should save the commercials for those insipid bits before the film.
(Michael Redman has written this column since before Mars was discovered and if that planet is as exciting as this film, he thinks he'll just stay home. Email your Martian chronicles to [email protected].)
[This appeared in the 3/16/2000 "Bloomington Independent", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at [email protected].]
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