Roll-M: Mission To Mars |
Mission to Mars (starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle, Jerry O'Connell, Connie Nielsen; story by David S. Goyer screenplay by Ted Tally; directed by Brian DePalma; rated PG).
For weeks I had been gearing up for Mission to Mars. The movie has one of the most enticing trailers I've seen in years - wowee special FX, the promise of mysteries of our origins solved, space travel and all the adventure into the unknown you'd ever want. These are the movies I live for. I realize now that nothing could have lived up to that kind of hype or expectation. Mission to Mars is not the greatest thing since sliced bread, or since 2001 for that matter. There are some wonderful moments - a mountain that becomes a vacuum cleaner; a graceful, weightless dance scene; a struggle for survival as the rescue crew goes EVA after their spacecraft blows apart; some cool, if rather bizarre FX tracing our evolution from lowly creatures to humans with spears chasing down buffalo (although I'm not sure why the dinosaurs morphed into elephants). Make no mistake - the film is entertaining. I suspect it will make a pile of money (it had already pulled in $23 million as of this writing, just after its first weekend). But I kept wishing for more - or maybe less. My wish list would include less homage to 2001, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. (why do benevolent aliens always have blue eyes?) and so on. Also less music - the soundtrack is atrocious and intrusive. Less hackneyed dialogue. And a plot device that doesn't validate the "face" on Mars cultists. Meanwhile, with this being the first science fiction FX-laden film to come down the pike in quite a while, I can live with it... might even rent it when it comes out on video. I love the mountain-vacuum cleaner, although my dog will probably hide under the table. Hmmm...she may have a point.
Two and one-half owls (Out of 5)