Subject: Retrospective: Mars Attacks! (1996)

From: "Andy Wright" <[email-masked]>
Date: 27 Jan 1998 06:05:59 GMT

MARS ATTACKS! (1996)

Let's not mince words here; Director Tim Burton's big budget sci-fi
spoof is, at first glance, a real mess.  After an awesome credit
sequence, the first half of the movie wobbles along like one of Ed
Wood's spaceships, with an all-star cast (including Jack Nicholson in
2 roles, Glenn Close, Michael J. Fox and a multitude of others)
seemingly unsure of what exactly is expected of them. (Only Pierce
Brosnan, as a perfect distillation of every stiffly handsome eggheaded
scientist from the great `50s monster movies, really seems to be in on
the joke.) Not that this narrative sloppiness is exactly out of
character for this director (Let's face it, based on prior evidence
like BATMAN RETURNS and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, the odds of Tim Burton
ever turning out a film with a completely coherent storyline are about
as likely as Stanley Kubrick making a movie about kickboxing), but
it's still disappointing, considering all the talent involved.  But
just when you're about to give up hope, suddenly the aliens land, the
gags start flying faster and faster, and the movie gets great in a
hurry. Whenever the bubble-domed, big-brained Martians are on screen,
this movie achieves the kind of surreal, anything goes quality
previously found only in the classic Warner Brothers cartoons or the
best issues of MAD magazine, as Burton and co.  tweak virtually every
invasion flick ever made. (One of the best gags - involving the
Washington Monument, a malevolent UFO, and a slow moving Boy Scout
troop - is lifted directly from the Ray Harryhausen classic EARTH vs
THE FLYING SAUCERS.) Not all of the jokes work, but the ones that do
make it more than worth your while (the Martians' um - unique method
of dealing with a nuclear missile is far and away my favorite movie
moment of '96).  By the time that Tom Jones and Jim Brown have joined
forces to stomp some alien butt, this movie has attained a giggly type
of weirdness that's impossible to resist; it left me ack-ing for days.

Copyright 1997: The Critic formerly known as Andrew Wright
http://www.seanet.com/~louk/
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