From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Dec 3 13:43:55 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!ix.netcom.com!enews.sgi.com!lll-winken.llnl.gov!fnnews.fnal.gov!cbgw1.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: good@pixar.com (Craig Good) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 2 Dec 1996 21:15:47 GMT Organization: Pixar Lines: 38 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <57vgu3$23o@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: good@pixar.com (Craig Good) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06438 Keywords: author=Good Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5832 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1140 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Craig Good Copyright 1996 Craig Good WARNING: There are NO spoilers in this review. I wouldn't do that to you. Tim Burton has clout. That's obvious because he was allowed to make "Mars Attacks", a hilarious, no-punches-pulled comedy spectacle. I'm glad that Burton now has that kind of clout, and that technology has pretty well caught up with his vision. >From the opening images I was hooked. These are flying saucers the way flying saucers are *supposed* to look. And there are the right number of them -- finally! ILM has delivered both Martians and effects big time: I mean both quality and quantity. The animation of the Martians is, in many places, the finest character animation ILM has ever done. And Burton has delivered a fun set of characters in the form of an all-star cast. Nobody is spared. Everybody is lampooned. From the opportunistic President, mugged to a fare-thee-well by a gleeful Jack Nicholson, to the Newage (rhymes with sewage) pyramid-and-crystal bimbo burbled by Anette Bening, to the hawkish general emoted by Rod Steiger, everybody gets a jab. I don't want to go into any detail here, but I do want you to go see the movie. There are images (and sounds, thanks to Randy Thom's design work) which I confidently predict you will not forget. Heavens, *I* nearly forgot Danny Elfman's inspired, theremin-rich score. And some gags that work on a truly grand scale. Oh -- and gags you won't believe they took *that* far. In short, it delivers everything the bloated and ultimately lame "Independence Day" should have, plus a lot of belly laughs in the process. --Craig good@pixar.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Dec 3 13:44:16 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!newspump.sol.net!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.idt.net!enews.sgi.com!lll-winken.llnl.gov!fnnews.fnal.gov!cbgw1.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: berardin@bc.cybernex.net (James Berardinelli) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 2 Dec 1996 21:17:18 GMT Organization: - Lines: 119 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <57vh0u$23t@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: berardin@bc.cybernex.net (James Berardinelli) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06441 Keywords: author=Berardinelli Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5831 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1139 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by James Berardinelli Copyright 1996 James Berardinelli RATING (0 TO 10): 5.5 Alternative Scale: ** out of **** United States, 1996 U.S. Release Date: 12/13/96 (wide) Running Length: 1:47 MPAA Classification: PG-13 (Martian gore, violence) Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cast: Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Martin Short, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Michael J. Fox, Danny DeVito, Lukas Haas, Sylvia Sidney, Rod Steiger, Paul Winfield, Natalie Portman, Tom Jones, Joe Don Baker Director: Tim Burton Producers: Tim Burton and Larry Franco Screenplay: Jonathan Gems Cinematography: Peter Suschitzky Music: Danny Elfman U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers What do you get if you use Tim Burton, the inspired and irreverent director of BATMAN and ED WOOD, to combine an invasion force of bug- eyed, big-brained Martians, a star-studded cast featuring some of the biggest names in Hollywood, and a huge special effects budget? Sadly, one of 1996's most disappointing motion pictures. MARS ATTACKS!, Burton's half-satire/half-homage to '50s B-movies, is a stillborn affair that could have been -- and should have been -- a whole lot hipper and funnier. If you've seen the two-minute theatrical trailer, you've seen nearly everything that's worthwhile in the feature. MARS ATTACKS! depicts a Martian invasion of three parts of the United States: Washington D.C., Las Vegas, and the plains of Kansas. Along the way, we meet a gallery of underdeveloped (or, in many cases, completely undeveloped) would-be-characters. In Washington, there's President James Dale (Jack Nicholson), his wife, Martha (Glenn Close), and his daughter, Taffy (Natalie Portman). In the face of the attack, the Commander-in-Chief is not-so-ably assisted by a bumbling staff, which includes a sex-obsessed speech writer (Martin Short), a "nuke-em- now" general (Rod Steiger) and his peace-loving counterpart (Paul Winfield), and a clueless scientist (Pierce Brosnan) who knows nothing but says a lot. Meanwhile, in Vegas, the Martians encounter real estate mogul Art Land (Nicholson), his alcoholic-turned-spiritualist wife, Barbara (Annette Bening), a rude gambler (Danny DeVito) who could care less about the invasion, a former heavyweight champion (Jim Brown) trying to get back together with his wife (Pam Grier), and the irrepressible singer, Tom Jones (himself). In Kansas, we're introduced to a smaller group: teenager Richie Norris (Lucas Haas), his daffy grandmother (Sylvia Sidney), and his gun-loving father (Joe Don Baker). Finally, there are the two New York-based reporters who cover the Martian situation: hair-obsessed Jason Stone (Michael J. Fox) and his vacuous girlfriend, Natalie West (Sarah Jessica Parker). With such a mammoth cast, it's not surprising that only a few actors get more than token attention. Even Glenn Close, who is billed second, has a total of ten minutes of screen time and only a handful of lines (memorizing dialogue must have been exceptionally undemanding). Jack Nicholson, who has by far the most number of scenes, splits his time between two personas, halving (rather than doubling) his effectiveness. There's absolutely nothing in any of these characters for an audience to latch on to. There are a few nicely-executed comic performances. Natalie Portman gives us a bored First Daughter who has perhaps the best line (taken in context) in the entire movie ("I guess it wasn't the bird"). Rod Steiger effectively emulates George C. Scott's war-mongering General Turgidson from DR. STRANGELOVE. Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker make for a fun-but-brainless (or maybe that should be "body-less") pair. And Jim Brown does a fine job playing off of his Blaxploitation image by punching out aliens left and right. MARS ATTACKS! contains a number of genuinely funny moments that occur both through the dialogue and as a result of the visual approach (there's a Godzilla cameo, the "bowling over" of Stonehenge, and a sequence where the Martians toy with the Washington Monument before toppling it). Unfortunately, too many attempts at comedy don't succeed, creating long stretches between laughs. Another problem is that, on more than one occasion, when Burton finds a gag that works, he overuses it. And, instead of going for truly corrosive, DR. STRANGELOVE-type satire, the focus is on less-vicious, more obvious forms of mocking. In addition to its other faults, MARS ATTACKS! is not well-edited. In fact, there are portions that border on incoherent. The movie lurches disjointedly from scene-to-scene as the tone careens from turgid to fast-paced. Plot doesn't really matter, which is a good thing. Burton has used a 1962 Topps trading card series as his inspiration, combining WAR OF THE WORLDS-like Martians with images and scenarios familiar from bad 1950s alien invasion flicks. Many of the special effects (especially those involving flying saucers and mass destruction) have an intentionally cheesy edge, and Danny Elfman's score contains throwback elements. The overall problem is that the idea of MARS ATTACKS! works a lot better on paper than in practice. A word has to be said about the relationship between MARS ATTACKS! and this summer's phenomenally successful INDEPENDENCE DAY. Although the two films were developed separately and during the same time frame, the temptation exists to say that this film is satirizing the earlier blockbuster. While that's not the case, MARS ATTACKS! does lampoon the genre that spawned ID4. Of course, that won't prevent the Warner Brothers marketing department from connecting the two. I was anticipating a lot from MARS ATTACKS!, but what I got was a shell of my expectations. There are too many characters, too little story, and too much unfunny and repetitious material. The first half is painfully slow, forcing us to suffer through the needlessly laborious exercise of meeting and learning something about each of the characters. Despite Burton's effort and ingenuity, there's never an effective comic or sci-fi payoff. From time-to-time, MARS ATTACKS! gives us tantalizing glimpses of brilliance, but those moments only illustrate how flawed and unsatisfactory the rest of the film is. - James Berardinelli e-mail: berardin@bc.cybernex.net ReelViews web site: http://www.cybernex.net/~berardin From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Dec 10 10:48:19 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!eru.mt.luth.se!news.algonet.se!news.uoregon.edu!hammer.uoregon.edu!arclight.uoregon.edu!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: vanyel@crl.com (Paul W. Cashman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 9 Dec 1996 20:30:38 GMT Organization: CRL Dialup Internet Access Lines: 54 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <58hste$3ai@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: vanyel@crl.com (Paul W. Cashman) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06459 Keywords: author=Cashman Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5862 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1152 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Paul W. Cashman Copyright 1996 Paul W. Cashman Summary: see it at a matinee price; it might not be for everyone. I'd only seen one quick ad for this film before seeing a sneak preview on December 1st, so I had few preconceptions about it. I knew that Tim Burton was involved and that it looked like a send-up of B-movies, a genre with which I'm passingly familiar, but that's about it. For me, this film didn't -quite- work. There were some really funny moments, but many of the stereotype portrayals were a bit over the top, at least for me. Jack Nicholson turns in a truly scary performance as the President -- I'd be scared if he were in office! -- and the lampooning of various other institutions, groups and cultures continues, to the point where underneath its veneer the movie seems to be lecturing us....... --Which would be fine if it weren't trying to be uproariously campy at the same time, and it was trying. Maybe TOO campy; some of the effects were intentionally cheesy but distracted from the flow because of that. Some scenes were so over-the-top campy that the audience could do nothing else but groan. Unfortunately, the average movie-goer won't get all the gags -- some will get fewer than half -- and so we doubted afterwards the movie would "fly." MARS ATTACKS! includes cameo performances from a number of actors including Danny DeVito (fine if somewhat predictable, in-character as a Vegas shark) and crooner Tom Jones (also part of the Vegas scenes). No major complaints about the acting, but we wondered afterwards what some of these 'big guns' were doing in this particular film. Overall, I thought the movie was so-so. It didn't quite work for me but for other genre fans, especially those more familiar with the lurid pulps and B-films, it might appeal more. The score, by Danny Elfman, is almost worth a matinee admission price in itself. Elfman and Burton received applause during the opening credits. It's hard to give a best scene without revealing a spoiler, but the scene where the Easter Island statues are bowled over -- literally -- by the Martians is pretty funny. Many of the best scenes already appear in the previews, anyway. Conclusion: see it with genre-loving friends at a matinee price. You could wait for it to come to video, but some of the effects -are- worth seeing on the large screen, and Elfman's score is worth it, too. Rating: 6 out of 10 (but I expect a wide range here:)) -- Paul W. Cashman www.crl.com/~vanyel From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:08 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!enews.sgi.com!news.sgi.com!howland.erols.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: null@filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 11 Dec 1996 17:59:04 GMT Organization: Null Publishing Co. Lines: 58 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <58msp8$8q4@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: null@filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06492 Keywords: author=Null Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5887 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1158 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Christopher Null Copyright 1996 Christopher Null We've already had three movies based on TV shows this year, plus a film based on a TV commercial, but I think it's a really bad omen when a film is based on a series of trading cards. The film is MARS ATTACKS!, and with it Tim Burton serves up the worst production of his once-blossoming career, a movie wherein he indulges every excess of his demented psyche, pays no attention to entertaining the audience, and recycles every joke he can get his hands on. The joke recycling would be okay, even appropriate, given Burton's predilection for shtick, if only the jokes were *funny*! But they're not. Nothing much is funny in MARS ATTACKS!, whose mildly amusing "War of the Worlds" story can best be described as... Mars attacks. Burton obviously started this production in the casting -- Jack Nicholson as the president, Glenn Close as his uppity wife, Annette Bening as a New Age freak, Pierce Brosnan as a sophisticated science advisor. You get the idea. I guess Burton figured that throwing Tom Jones (as himself) into the mix would make it all better. And maybe it would have, except the performances look like they're cobbled together from the days off that the cast of some 15 "name" actors happened to have. Bits and pieces of what should be on the editing room floor have somehow made their way into the final print instead, and in no particular order, either. Only one running joke stands out as worthy -- a flirtation between two disembodied heads (I won't say who). I realize that MARS ATTACKS! was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek homage to the cheesy, old sci-fi flicks (but Tim, you *already* made ED WOOD), but MARS ATTACKS! isn't even any good as a farce. The movie just plain looks bad -- too bad to be taken seriously, but not bad enough to look bad on purpose. And Burton's use of ultra-campy stars like Lisa Marie and Pam Grier? Puh-leeze. Where's Richard Roundtree, Tim? Got the point yet? Because I'm tired of writing about this dead film. I wonder if we'll ever know what Burton had in mind when he put together this giant waste of time, but then again, who cares? RATING: ** |------------------------------| \ ***** Perfection \ \ **** Good, memorable film \ \ *** Average, hits and misses \ \ ** Sub-par on many levels \ \ * Unquestionably awful \ |------------------------------| -Christopher Null / null@filmcritic.com / Writer-Producer -Visit the Movie Emporium at http://www.filmcritic.com -and Null Set Productions at http://www.filmcritic.com/nullset.htm From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:10 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lejonet.se!linkoping.trab.se!malmo.trab.se!newsfeed.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-stkh.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news-penn.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: legeros@pagesz.net (Michael J. Legeros) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 11 Dec 1996 17:59:43 GMT Organization: none Lines: 42 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <58msqf$8q8@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: legeros@pagesz.net (Michael J. Legeros) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06494 Keywords: author=Legeros Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5896 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1159 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Michael John Legeros Copyright 1996 Michael John Legeros (WB) Directed by Tim Burton Written by Jonathan Gems Cast Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Martin Short, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Michael J. Fox, Danny DeVito, Lukas Haas, Sylvia Sidney, Rod Steiger, Paul Winfield, Natalie Portman, Tom Jones MPAA Rating "PG-13" Running Time 107 minutes Reviewed at Six Forks Station Cinemas, Raleigh, NC (30NOV96) == Tim Burton's new movie is strangely sedate, which is a polite way of saying that it's boring even though it's not supposed to be. His elaborate (but never engaging) sci-fi/monster/disaster-movie spoof, adapted from the vintage (and violent) trading card set, has two things going for it: fabulous art direction and the director's gleefully grotesque sense of humor. The latter, with its many playful sequences of torture and gore, is almost certain to be lost on the masses. Audiences may have cheered INDEPENDENCE DAY, but scenes of burning cattle and other crispy critters are sure to send them in the direction of other holiday movies. Obviously Mr. B. doesn't care. He appears willing to do almost anything for a sick laugh, including killing off most of his cast. Almost two-dozen stars appear in this one, from Jack Nicholson (in two roles) to Sara Jessica Parker to Jim Brown. Most of their characters are so boring, though, that you won't even mind when they're turned into toast. Ack ack ack ack! Grade: B- -- Mike Legeros - Raleigh, NC, USA, Earth legeros@pagesz.net (h) - legeros@unx.sas.com (w) I'm also on the Web! http://www.pagesz.net/~legeros/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:11 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!newsfeed.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.pbi.net!cbgw3.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: srenshaw@leland.stanford.edu (Scott Renshaw) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 16 Dec 1996 14:48:23 GMT Organization: Stanford University Lines: 92 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <593nfn$1ea@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: srenshaw@leland.stanford.edu (Scott Renshaw) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06499 Keywords: author=Renshaw Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5902 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1161 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Scott Renshaw Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw (Warner Bros.) Starring: Jack Nicholson, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Danny DeVito, Michael J. Fox. Screenplay: Jonathan Gems, based on MARS ATTACKS! by Topps. Producers: Tim Burton, Larry Franco. Director: Tim Burton. MPAA Rating: PG-13 (violence, profanity, brief sexual situations). Running Time: 105 minutes Reviewed by Scott Renshaw. I really wanted MARS ATTACKS! to be the movie INDEPENDENCE DAY wasn't. Tim Burton's malevolent alien invasion saga faces such obvious comparisons to 1996's other malevolent alien invasion saga that it would have been a pleasure to find that this one was The Little B-Movie Homage That Could, juxtaposed with The Big B-Movie Re-tread That Couldn't. I came ready for delight, and instead I found disappointment. MARS ATTACKS! is a more inventive film than INDEPENDENCE DAY, but it is also a sluggish one, in addition to having a surprising streak of nastiness. If you didn't know MARS ATTACKS! and INDEPENDENCE DAY were made at about the same time, you might swear that Tim Burton had a chip on his shoulder about having to follow a blockbuster. MARS ATTACKS! begins with the discovery that flying saucers from Mars are headed towards the earth in massive numbers. President Jimmy Dale (Jack Nicholson) is concerned and hawkish General Decker (Rod Steiger) is ready to launch the nukes, but Dr. Donald Kessler (Pierce Brosnan) assures everyone that such an advanced civilization is almost certain to be peaceful. The Martian visitors find the red carpet rolled out for a diplomatic greeting in the Nevada desert, but the historic close encounter turns into a bloodbath when the aliens open fire on humans. The president and Kessler believe that it was all the result of a cultural misunderstanding, and try to make peace. Unfortunately, it seems that the visitors are only interested in making pieces, as they launch an all-out attack on the earth. Like INDEPENDENCE DAY, MARS ATTACKS! follows groups of characters in several different locations as they face the threat of extra terrestrial assault. In Las Vegas, recovering alcoholic/New Age adherent Barbara (Annette Bening) joins forces with ex-boxer/casino photo opportunity Byron (Jim Brown) and singer Tom Jones (himself); in Kansas, donut shop employee Richie (Lukas Haas) joins forces with his senile grandmother (Sylvia Sidney). What is surprising is that these stories are played so straight, and with nearly as little character development as INDEPENDENCE DAY. Each character is given an eccentric moment, after which he or she generally disappears either entirely for a long time. No one really gets a chance to _do_ anything, notably Natalie Portman (re-visiting Winona Ryder's morose teen from BEETLEJUICE as the First Daughter). Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker are entertaining as the unctuous Kessler and a dim fashion reporter, respectively, but their appearance is most memorable because they share a tender love scene as severed heads. That moment highlights what is both best and worst about MARS ATTACKS!, which is the perverse visual humor. Burton tosses out some truly twisted gems along with just-plain-silliness, and the deliberately cheesy visual effects are both effective on their own and as a source for an internal joke involving a Godzilla film. The problem is that nothing really builds in MARS ATTACKS!; the jokes are often stand-alone vignettes un-related to anything which precedes them or anything which follows them, making for a film which jerks along unsteadily with little momentum. MARS ATTACKS! is based on a series of trading cards by Topps, and appropriately enough that is the way the movie feels: you flip over one scene, chuckle at it, then forget it almost before you flip over the next one. The one thing Burton and screenwriter Jonathan Gems do much better than INDEPENDENCE DAY is allow us to get to know the aliens, and what a bunch of leering interplanetary sociopaths they are. The scenes on board the flying saucers show the Martians' delight at duping humanity and wreaking havoc, and while the malicious Martians provide their share of laughs, the whole concept is strangely mean-spirited. The entire invasion consists of variations on the aliens seducing humans with a friendly word, a teary eyeball or a pleasing form, then finding new and creative ways of stabbing them in the back (sometimes literally). Burton almost seems to share this smirking disregard for his characters (and an unexplainable hatred of birds) as he reduces them to scorched skeletons in scenes which may be too graphic for youngsters. There is plenty of imagination in MARS ATTACKS! (the aliens' downfall certainly does not involve a computer virus), but the ideas prickle rather than tickle. Something seemed to be annoying Tim Burton when he made MARS ATTACKS!, and he's probably going to be more annoyed if audiences decide it isn't the movie INDEPENDENCE DAY was. On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 angry red planets: 5. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw Subscribe to receive reviews directly via email See details on the MoviePage From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:12 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!newsfeed.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.pbi.net!cbgw3.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: rhodes_steve@tandem.com (Steve Rhodes) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 16 Dec 1996 15:01:08 GMT Organization: Tandem Computers, Inc. Lines: 115 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <593o7k$1gq@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: rhodes_steve@tandem.com (Steve Rhodes) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06503 Keywords: author=Rhodes Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5913 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1164 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ** "It is an awesome sight. The Martian spacecraft hovering in the Nevada desert like a giant hubcap," reports breathless and brainless TV talk show host Nathalie Lake (Sarah Jessica Parker). Yes, Tim Burton (ED WOOD, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS and BATMAN) is back, and this time he turns his considerable creative talent to a spoof called MARS ATTACKS!. He tries to make a parody of a science fiction movie, but instead comes up with a film that plays more as a parody of a parody. The picture is laced with sag gags from end to end, but most manage to fall as flat as the spoken humor from screenwriter Jonathan Gems. Like a well-constructed bad painting, there is much to admire in the film, but the net effect leaves you dispassionate. The movie, which has some similarities to the vastly superior INDEPENDENCE DAY, has the president as the central character. Jack Nicholson plays President Dale as well as hard drinking, Las Vegas developer Art Land. Actually, Jack Nicholson plays Jack Nicholson doing his usual shtick. Like the president in INDEPENDENCE DAY, President Dale has his big speech to the nation when the aliens, in his case Martians, are spotted. In a singularly trite address, he proclaims to his people, "It is profoundly moving to know there is intelligent life out there." Accomplished costume designer Colleen Atwood (LITTLE WOMEN, THAT THING YOU DO!, and EDWARD SCISSORHANDS) designed the costumes for MARS ATTACKS!. She uses badly contrasting pastel colors to make the already ditzy cast seem even more so. Parker plays a role reminiscent of her kid's TV show part in THE SUBSTANCE OF FIRE. Here, her clothes are even more outlandish. The sets by Wynn Thomas are a panoply of bad taste. Parker's character, for example, sets in egg shaped black and white checkered chairs while doing her interviews. The chair's contrast with her clothes will probably short circuit a few picture tubes when the movies goes to video. Lukas Haas as Richie Norris is the only sincere character in the movie. He also gets the best line. When the Martians land, everyone assumes that they are friendly. After the Martian Ambassador makes a circular motion, Richie says, "Wow, he made the international sign of the donut." Most characters in the film do little set pieces having only tangential relation to the rest of the story. Annette Bening plays a rich new ager named Barbara Land. As the Martians disembark for the first time, she sets lotus position on top of her Mercedes convertible while holding a Crystal pyramid. Martin Short is presidential press secretary Jerry Ross. After the Martians slaughter hundreds of army soldiers and innocent civilians, he wants the president to hold a town meeting to get America's opinion before making a decision on how to respond. As shown in the trailers, the Martians vaporize the entire congress. Not unpleased, the President says, "I want the people to know that they still have two out of three branches of government and that ain't bad." This is one of those Hollywood casts of thousands movies. Everyone who is anyone gets a part. Even Tom Jones, playing himself of course, comes to the rescue. For the record, the movie also has Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger, Natalie Portman, Jim Brown, Lisa Marie, Sylvia Sidney, Christina Applegate, Joe Don Baker, Pam Grier, and Paul Winfield. See what I mean. I am not against using large numbers of stars in a picture. Earlier that day I saw the new and absolutely marvelous four hour Hamlet. In it Kenneth Branagh uses a large cast of acting's luminaries to great effect. MARS ATTACK! is a violent film. Most of it is semi-cartoonish with hundreds of people vaporized with their skin being eaten away until only a red or green skeleton is left. Why some end up red and others blue is the story's chief conundrum. In a scene lifted straight out of an R rated horror movie, one character's finger is realistically eaten and then the bloody stump is thrown in a fish bowl. The camera moves in for a close-up to make sure we see it. Taken as a film for adults, the violence is not a problem, but considering this film is rated PG-13, there will be many frightened grade-schoolers. It certainly frightened my son badly, and I have not seen him scared at a movie in over a year. As a son of movie critic, he sees many films. He has been to the theater 26 times this year, but none of them affected him as this one did. I did enjoy portions of MARS ATTACKS!, but its whole is less than the some of the few good parts. At least it has a totally unpredictable ending. Even an experience alien fighter will not be able to figure out the Achilles' heel of these Martians. MARS ATTACKS! runs 1:42. It is rated PG-13. There is no nudity, but there is brief sex, some profanity, and lots of violence. My son Jeffrey, age 7 1/2, gives it a "thumbs 55 percent down and 45 percent up." My ever affable son, tends to like every movie, but not this one. He said the film is "for kids 7 1/2 and up because I really was scared, and I get scared easier than most kids my age." I think the film is for kids 9 or 10 and up. I can not recommend it, but I do give it **. ______________________________________________________________________ **** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable. REVIEW WRITTEN ON: December 10, 1996 Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:14 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!newsfeed.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!nntp.crl.com!news.pbi.net!cbgw3.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: mrbrown@ucla.edu (Michael Dequina) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 16 Dec 1996 15:02:44 GMT Organization: Yale CS Mail/News Gateway Lines: 68 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <593oak$1h2@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: mrbrown@ucla.edu (Michael Dequina) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06505 Keywords: author=Dequina Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5919 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1167 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Michael Dequina Copyright 1996 Michael Dequina (PG-13) *** 1/2 (out of ****) After his excellent 1994 biopic of the worst filmmaker of all time, Ed Wood, it was only a matter of time before Tim Burton made an Ed Wood movie of his own. Two years later we have Mars Attacks!, a darkly humorous sendup of and affectionate homage to B-grade sci-fi epics of the 1950s. Like all alien invasion epics, Mars Attacks! follows a pastiche of characters and how they cope with a hostile Martian invasion. The players include the President of the United States (Jack Nicholson); the First Lady (Glenn Close) and First Daughter (Natalie Portman); a stuffy White House scientist (Pierce Brosnan); the skirtchasing Presidential press secretary (Martin Short); a ditzy fashion reporter (Sarah Jessica Parker); her vain reporter boyfriend (Michael J. Fox); a Kansas teen (Lukas Haas) and his grandmother (Sylvia Sidney); an alcoholic Vegas casino owner (Nicholson again); his New Agey wife (Annette Bening); an ex-boxer-turned-costumed-Vegas-casino-attraction (Jim Brown); his estranged wife (Pam Grier); a rude gambler (Danny DeVito); and, yes, Tom Jones himself. With so many characters on the canvas, the Burton and screenwriter Jonathan Gems understandably take a while to establish them and get the picture going. But after all the setup, it is quite disappointing that a number of the characters do not have the most satisfying of payoffs (Nicholson's casino owner in particular). But unlike a certain alien invasion picture that came out in the summer, all of these original, wacky characters do make their distinct impression; none blend into a forgettable blob. And unlike that nameless blockbuster, even the aliens are allowed to show some personality--the sight of them vaporizing buildings and people with maniacal gusto while saying "Don't run! We are your friends!" says it all. It's that quirky Burton mix of camp and macabre humor that makes Mars Attacks! so much fun; ironically, that's also what will probably end up hurting the film at the box office, like it did Ed Wood. The imagination and wit behind oddly clever way the humans end up getting the better of the Martians will likely be lost on most mainstream moviegoers; in fact, most people would probably call it a letdown. What will not be lost on mainstream viewers, however, is the impressive visual effects of the piece. The diminutive green Martians with enlarged brains are certainly a sight to behold, and the massive destruction they cause is all done very convincingly. The most brilliant touch is how the effects, as elaborate and expensive as they are, do not betray the look and feel of, say, a Plan 9 from Outer Space. The flying saucers don't have any visible strings holding them up, but they do resemble, as Parker's character puts it, "flying hubcaps." When people are vaporized, we see their flesh and other entrails dissolve into the air, but their whole skeletons are left behind--in either green or red, no less. Martian brains explode but not without spurting green sludge. Some crucial effects involving Parker and Brosnan could not have been accomplished in the 1950s, but the idea behind them is something you would see in a movie from that time, albeit done with a straight face. Burton also doesn't resist the use of that staple of Ed Wood movies, stock footage. This attention to detail makes Mars Attacks!, its satiric qualities notwithstanding, a knowing and loving tribute to those cheesy B-movies. After the phenomenal success of Independence Day, I am not so sure that Mars Attacks! will be able to find an audience even half the size of that film's. It's not that the films are too similar, far from it; it's just that the majority of moviegoers, looking for something straightforward like an ID4, won't quite "get" the unconventional Mars. But anyone who is willing and able to buy into the film's eccentricities is sure to enjoy Mars Attacks!. __________________________________________________________ Michael Dequina mrbrown@ucla.edu Visit Mr. Brown's Movie Site at http://members.tripod.com/~MrBrown/ Personal Page: http://members.tripod.com/~MrBrown/home.html From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:15 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!newsfeed.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-stkh.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news-lond.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!news-peer.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: noraruth@aol.com (Andrew Hicks) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 16 Dec 1996 15:52:33 GMT Organization: University of Missouri - Columbia Lines: 71 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <593r81$1ll@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: noraruth@aol.com (Andrew Hicks) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06517 Keywords: author=Hicks Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5916 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1166 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Andrew Hicks Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions (1996) *** (out of four) Tim Burton loves to indulge himself. His BATMAN films steered the venerable superhero out of his usual comfort zone and into Burton's own brooding vision of Gotham, his ED WOOD was one man's homage to the worst movie director ever, and this film, MARS ATTACKS, is Burton's own bizarre, campy take on the science-fiction genre. Five months after INDEPENDENCE DAY, this movie offers an even more caricaturistic take on aliens attacking Earth, one which has a deliciously mod art direction and a great sense of humor. Another thing linking INDEPENDENCE DAY and MARS ATTACKS is the star-studded ensemble cast that doesn't take itself the least bit seriously, although this film's cast blows ID4's out of the water. Jack Nicholson stars as both the President and a seedy Vegas land schemer. Glenn Close -- the second-billed star who has maybe five lines tops -- plays the First Lady, with Natalie Portman as their teenage daughter (if Chelsea Clinton was this cute, we'd have to throw the two-term limit out the window), Martin Short as the lusty press secretary and Pierce Brosnan as the professor optimistic about alien life. Outside of the White House are Michael J. Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker are married journalists with jobs at competing TV stations. Blaxploitation star Jim Brown is an ex-boxer who makes a living dressed up as a pharoah at the Vegas casino Tom Jones headlines. Yes, Tom is part of the MARS ATTACKS ensemble, and even gets a few lines in when he's not singing "It's Not Unusual." Danny DeVito and Lukas Haas are also in there somewhere. With a cast this big, most of the stars don't get a whole lot of screen time. The Martians themselves are a main part of the cast. A mixture of computer and stop-motion animation, they walk funny, have huge heads and bleed green. Obviously, they don't come in peace -- how much fun would it be if they did? No, these guys start an all-out war on the human race which includes disentigrating Congress (whether this is good or bad for humanity is debatable) and re-sculpting Mount Rushmore into their likenesses. Certain parts of MARS ATTACKS are Burton at his finest -- brightly colored sets and costumes, juvenile sight gags and corny lines delivered straight. But don't mistake this for a parody along the lines of SPY HARD or HOT SHOTS, this is more of a satire of an entire genre, a satire that relies more on over-acting and a mixture of incredible and purposefully-bad special effects. The alien saucers are little more than spinning pie plates but, as in ID4, various worldwide monuments are convincingly destroyed. MARS ATTACKS, serious or not, makes for a good disaster epic. That it actually has a sense of humor is a bonus. The rating on this movie would be much higher if not for the slow first half of the film. The last forty-five minutes or so is all four-star material, but MARS ATTACKS takes its sweet time to get started. It takes a certain amount of time to introduce the characters and set-up the invasion and attack. Here is where we could have used a lot of laughs, but Burton plays most of the opening scenes surreal yet basically serious. A lot of talent and potential comic material goes to waste there, which is a disaster in itself. -- Visit the Movie Critic at LARGE homepage at http://www.missouri.edu/~c667778/movies.html Serving America For Over 1/33rd of a Century! From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:16 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!Zeke.Update.UU.SE!columba.udac.uu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news00.sunet.se!sunic!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!visi.com!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!anchor.cis.att.com!cbgw1.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: bfrazer@panix.com (Bryant Frazer) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 16 Dec 1996 16:00:59 GMT Organization: PANIX: Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC Lines: 139 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <593rnr$1n2@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: bfrazer@panix.com (Bryant Frazer) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06522 Keywords: author=Frazer Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5905 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1162 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Bryant Frazer Copyright 1996 Bryant Frazer GRADE: A- I'm not quite sure what to say about MARS ATTACKS!, which is obviously the work of a deranged genius. When Tim Burton's twisted alien invasion comedy really works, it's breathtaking and hilarious in equal measure. And when it doesn't work, it's just dull. I'm not even sure it works more often than it doesn't, but where it counts -- that is, when this gleefully evil invading force from the red planet gets down to the business of blasting us to kingdom come -- MARS ATTACKS! is brilliant. MARS ATTACKS! is based on a rather unsavory series of trading cards released by Topps in the 1950s, and it takes its cues from the same sources as this summer's INDEPENDENCE DAY -- old alien invasion flicks, disaster movies, and big-budget special effects extravaganzas. But unlike INDEPENDENCE DAY, which was a painfully middle-of-the-road appeal to the hearts, minds and wallets of America, MARS ATTACKS! has a fully developed and very personal sense of wonder about it. The big difference is that while INDEPENDENCE DAY celebrated the resilience of human beings, MARS ATTACKS! portrays us as the greedy and hapless schmucks that we are. The title sequence is just splendid -- an incredible swarm of flying saucers rises out of the canals of the Red Planet and then storms Earthward through the solar system in formation. The spinning metal saucers are dead ringers for the invading forces of movies past, and their first appearance on the big screen in combination with Danny Elfman's thundering, theremin-driven score is absolutely jaw-dropping. It's so overwhelming that, I swear to you, I had trouble breathing. The movie lays low for the next 40 minutes. We get a glimpse of the alien leader, resplendent in a purple-sequined cape, when a television message is broadcast to the people of the world -- naturally, the only way to communicate with earthlings is to preempt our regularly scheduled programming. But mostly, the first act is spent developing characters, setting up mildly comic situations, and drawing a quirky but dishearteningly drab picture of America according to Tim Burton. It's a good thing that the most compelling personality in the movie belongs to the aliens, because Burton's just not interested in making more than caricatures out of his human stars. Anyone who comes to MARS ATTACKS! expecting to see a lot of one favorite actor is bound to be disappointed -- with few exceptions, these characters are dispatched as the film progresses. Jack Nicholson is a lot of fun as the President of the United States but fizzles as a sleazy Las Vegas hotel developer. Rod Steiger does an amusing enough take on Dr. Strangelove's Buck Turgidson, Glenn Close brings some star power to the role of the First Lady, and Martin Short is a Presidential aide who meets the Martians in the White House's "Kennedy Room," a secluded nook where he unwittingly tries to seduce an alien dressed up as a big-haired, pointy-breasted sexpot (Lisa Marie, the Burton flame who played Vampira in Ed Wood) -- in an earlier scene, it's made clear that the aliens studied human sexuality in the pages of an old issue of Playboy. Sarah Jessica Parker hosts her own TV show and Michael J. Fox is her newsman husband. The octogenarian Sylvia Sidney has a funny part as the old woman who cackles, "They blew up Congress!" and plays a decisive role in the defeat of the alien menace. Jim Brown and Tom Jones are the film's Vegas-based heroes, and director Barbet Schroeder (REVERSAL OF FORTUNE) has a funny cameo as the unfortunate French president. Also on hand and underutilized are Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Pam Grier, Lukas Haas and Natalie Portman(the latter two also show up in Woody Allen's EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU). The real stars, of course, are the computer-generated Martians, and they're fantastic. With bare brains glistening atop their grinning skull-faces, round egg-eyes with red pupils darting this way and that, these animated invaders are malevolence incarnate -- Joe Dante's GREMLINS are the closest equivalent in recent memory, but Burton's little monsters are more inventive. The film's raison d'etre are the scenes of crimes against mankind -- the most famous monuments of the world crumble under the alien assault, Easter Island is turned into a bowling alley, and the nasty little buggers perform hideous medical experiments on captured humans. The sheer level of mayhem is staggering, especially when the aliens make their first attack, blasting human beings into iridescent skeletons. Parents are urged to pay special attention to the PG-13 rating -- it's earned. The special effects vary from charming to astonishing to deliciously cheesy, and at least a couple of shots of mass destruction seem to have been engineered specifically in response to INDEPENDENCE DAY, although MARS ATTACKS! was in production long before that film's release. Cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, who makes the most of Wynn Thomas's wildly imaginative production design (Thomas helped define the Spike Lee style), actually took time off from his MARS ATTACKS! regimen to shoot CRASH for David Cronenberg. Cronenberg's movie will almost certainly be more somber -- it won't be released in the U.S. until early next year -- but MARS ATTACKS! is surely a similarly elegant nightmare. This is not a nice movie. (And which studio executive was duped into giving Burton $70 million to make it?) By setting the film's final scenes in the nearly empty, holocaust-ravaged America that INDEPENDENCE DAY conveniently avoided, Burton's invasion epic suggests that the world we've got may not be worth saving until many of the people on it are dead. The victims of his invasion are naive, greedy, or disastrously self-absorbed -- and a good thing, too, since the movie's wicked charm is dependent on our ability to take this invasion partly as a wish-fulfillment fantasy. The surviving cast members are the innocents and the entertainers, who triumph by determining that the alien invaders -- the ultimate elitists -- are actually susceptible to the kitschiest strains of American pop culture. Ultimately, this messy masterpiece is the year's funniest comedy and a weird, winking affirmation of the power of the people. -------------------------------------------------------------- Directed by Tim Burton Written by Jonathan Gems Cinematography by Peter Suschitzky Production Design by Wynn Thomas Music by Danny Elfman Starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Jim Brown, Tom Jones, Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan USA, 1996 -- DEEP FOCUS (Movie Reviews) http://www.panix.com/~bfrazer/flicker/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:18 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!news.stealth.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: wfrith1680@aol.com (Walter Frith) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 17 Dec 1996 21:02:30 GMT Organization: AOL Canada http://www.aol.ca Lines: 41 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5971p6$5hq@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: wfrith1680@aol.com (Walter Frith) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06523 Keywords: author=Frith Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5923 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1168 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Walter Frith Copyright 1996 Walter Frith It helps a great deal to have a movie come out at the end of the year that is a reminder of the year's biggest box office hit which came out in the summer. 'Independence Day' has skyrocketed to #6 on the all time box office list and that film about an alien invasion of Earth was a tense filled and dramatic telescope of filmmaking. A complete one hundred and eighty degree turn is completed with 'Mars Attacks.' An idiotic President of the United States (Jack Nicholson) and his hopelessly materialistic wife and U.S. First Lady (Glenn Close) are caught in a dilemma when Martians attack our planet and a wacky handful of characters are caught up in the frenzy. Visionary director Tim Burton ('Pee Wee's Big Adventure,' Beetlejuice,' Batman,' 'Edward Scissorhands,' 'Ed Wood') has cooked up a delicious mix of camp humour and visuals and has crossed the finish line with a movie which is not for all tastes but Burton's films usually aren't and 'Mars Attacks' has the director in the uncompromising position of telling his story with a mixed bag of lunacy. The funniest thing about this movie is that Nicholson not only plays the leader of the free world but also a sleazy and hard boiled Nevada real estate developer named Art Land. Yes, I'm certain the selection of this characters name was no co-incidence. His wardrobe alone is worth the price of admission for the amount of pure belly laughs that it delivers. Combine that with some ingenious computerized special effects and the cultural lessons of all those tacky flying saucer movies of the 1950's and 'Mars Attacks' delivers some surprisingly inventive gags and justice is done to the characters in the picture that you'll love to hate. I must admit that this picture caught me off guard as I was prepared for an 'Independence Day' rip off but it isn't that way at all. At the conclusion of this movie you'll find the end result comes from the most unlikely character and this one is destined to become a cult classic. Other cast members include Pierce Brosnan, Martin Short, Rod Steiger, Annette Bening, Jim Brown, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lukas Haas, Michael J. Fox, Danny De Vito, Natalie Portman, Sylvia Sidney, Lisa Marie and Tom Jones. OUT OF 5> * * * * Coming Soon: Reviews of 'Beavis and Butthead Do America' and 'My Fellow Americans.' SEE YOU AT THE MOVIES ! From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:19 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!sunic!mn6.swip.net!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!oleane!jussieu.fr!univ-lyon1.fr!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: carson@epix.net (Paul Miller) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 17 Dec 1996 21:03:13 GMT Organization: None that I know of Lines: 64 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5971qh$5ht@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: carson@epix.net (Paul Miller) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06525 Keywords: author=Miller Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5934 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1173 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Paul Miller Copyright 1996 Paul Miller As I went to the ticket window, I found myself very excited about Tim Burton's new film, Mars Attacks!. I thought this was going to be one of the best films I have ever seen. This is why they invented theatrical trailers. They make it look like the movie will be entertaining, energetic, and fun, but this isn't always the case. I'm sure if you've seen the trailer at one time or another, you would be compelled to see this movie. This is what sucked me in. Congrats Warner Bros., this is a super trailer. Enough about the trailer, on with the movie. The movies' first 45 minutes or so are about the most boring I've ever seen. Basically, it introduces most of the characters and manages to kill off a few. I was very disappointed when Michael J. Fox, who played a news reporter, was killed off in the first half hour. This set a sad tone on the movie that would not be soon forgotten. Anyway, the Martians surround Earth and they send us a signal that they are friendly. They land in a desert in Nevada and after a dove was let off as a sign of peace, the ambush begins. After a fake apology, the Martians take out Congress and the rest of the movie unfolds as you might think, with different personalities joining the mix. This movie (in terms of structure) could be compared to From Dusk till Dawn, in that there are two stories in one movie. Dusk was critized because the beginning developed characters masterfully then they got to the bar only to fight vampires. What I mean is the second part of this movie is what I thought the whole darn thing would be like, funny, imaginative, and hip. But this is not what happened. If the whole movie could have been like the second half, we could be talking classic, but unfortunately this didn't happen. As much as I enjoyed the second part, the terseness of the first part overshadows this and makes the movie worse than it should have been. Another thing that upset me to a point was how the filmakers mislead you before you even went inside the theater. Glenn Close was given second billing when actually she was only given about 15-20 minutes of screen time. Another thing was Danny DeVito was given fifth billing when he was in the movie no more than three minutes. Heck, Tom Jones and Jim Brown were in the movie more. All these criticisms seem make it seem like I hated this movie. This was not the case. Simply, the movie was not as good as it could have been, or actually should have been. ** (out of four) _______________________________________________________________________ Paul's scale **** - Superior in every way *** - Excellent, Far above average ** - Average, Nothing Special * - Terrible From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:20 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!demos!news.stealth.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: jblenkle@calweb.com (Joe Blenkle) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 17 Dec 1996 21:12:12 GMT Organization: CalWeb Internet Services, Inc. Lines: 92 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5972bc$5i9@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: jblenkle@calweb.com (Joe Blenkle) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06527 Keywords: author=Blenkle Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5931 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1172 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Joe Blenkle Copyright 1996 Joe Blenkle (**1/2 out of ****) Rated PG-13 Almost predictably so, MARS ATTACKS!, a new film by Tim Burton and Warner Brothers Pictures is dumb and mindless, but to such an extent that the film is really funny. Basically the premise behind the movie is that a bunch of little green men with very large heads decide that they like Earth a whole lot better than Mars and set out to conquer the planet. MARS ATTACKS! is actually based on a set of trading cards that were released for a short run in 1962. Due to the horrifying images on some of these cards, they were pulled from the stores and vending machines after only a few months. I personally remember these cards as a kid and they scared me to death! Fortunately, "MARS ATTACKS!" takes a lighter approach to the alien invasion theme and although some of the scenes might scare the younger children, they by in large are more humorous than anything else. The film is headlined by an all-star cast including the likes of Jack Nicholson (as the President), Martin Short, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Danny DeVito, Glenn Close and Tom Jones. "MARS ATTACKS!" clearly spoofs some of the great old science fiction "B" films, as well as some of the newer releases. SF aficionados will clearly see a lot of elements from that classic EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS as well as the more recent INDEPENDENCE DAY. But the silliness of the film is still its main attraction. After a fleet of flying saucers is seen heading toward Earth, it's marked as either the greatest event civilization has ever known or a precursor to impending doom. A meeting is set up between the aliens and representatives of the United States, at which time the alien ambassador and his guards open fire on the thousands of people gathered at a remote desert site. The President (Nicholson) thinks this may have just been a "cultural misunderstanding," so he beam a message into space inviting the aliens back. They come back to address Congress and offer an apology, at which time they again open fire, wiping out most of the legislative branch of the U.S. government. It finally sinks in that these aliens aren't nice guys and it's Earth vs. Mars in an all-out war of the worlds. I don't want to give too much of this film away because half the fun is seeing it on the screen and not quite knowing what to expect next. The special effects in the movie are very well done and the actors put in a superb performance fighting little green men and spaceships that weren't actually there. The Martians were created as three-dimensional computer generated characters by Industrial Light and Magic, which has previously done the effects on movies like TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY, FORREST GUMP, and JURASSIC PARK. "I was very lucky to have such great actors working against imaginary green men," says Burton, whose credits also include PEE-WEE'S BIG ADEVENTURE, BEETLEJUICE, BATMAN, and ED WOOD. "That was the most surreal thing. All of these great actors came in, and they basically reverted to play-acting. They all got into the spirit of it and it was a joy to watch them." If you are a sci-fi fan in general, the movie may leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. But if you're a fan of all those old "B" science-fiction movies from the 40s and 50s, you'll love the look of MARS ATTACKS!. It's just dumb enough to work and just good enough to hold your interest, although some of the scenes are a little slow developing and leave you wishing they'd get on with it. MARS ATTACKS! runs 105 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film stars: Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Benning, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jressica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman, Jim Brown, Lisa Marie and Sylvia Sidney (most of whom are disinigrated at various points in the movie). Directed by Tim Burton. Produced by Tim Burton and Larry Franco. Screen Story and Screenplay by Jonathan Gems. This review, photos, upcoming attractions, links and more can be found on my movie review web page at: http://www.calweb.com/~jblenkle/movies - stop by and visit! Guest reviews welcomed - email me at jblenkle@calweb.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:21 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!demos!news.stealth.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!newspump.sol.net!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: conty@cig.mot.com (Enrique Conty) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 17 Dec 1996 21:16:24 GMT Organization: Cannon Unit 17 Lines: 66 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5972j8$5il@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: conty@cig.mot.com (Enrique Conty) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06532 Keywords: author=Conty Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5927 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1171 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Enrique Conty Copyright 1996 Enrique Conty At one point in Mars Attacks!, director Tim Burton decided to use 1970's B-movie stock footage to show crowds running away from the Martian onslaught. It was at this point that I knew the movie had its heart in the right place. Mars Attacks! is based on the notorious 1950's trading card set from Topps. Said card set depicted an invasion of Earth (well, mostly the US) by aliens from the red planet, who are eventually beaten by humanity (well, mostly red-blooded American men). The cards lurid illustrations depicting things like a Martian incinerating a dog as its young owner watches in horror were considered too extreme for their time, so the card set was removed from the market shortly thereafter. Through the decades (maybe because of the controversy?), the Mars Attacks! cards have become an icon of counterculture Americana, like the B-grade sci-fi films of the era and "gentlemen's magazine" model Betty Page. Given Tim Burton's penchant for wonderfully grotesque humor and the same "cheesy is good" sensibility that made shows like Mystery Science Theater 3000 so popular, it was natural that he eventually would get around to try his hand at some sort of B-movie spoof. In Mars Attacks!, bug-eyed little green men from the rocky red planet board their shiny flying saucers, and come to Earth under the guise of peace, but their sinister intentions are revealed as they pull out their bright primary-colors disintegrator pistols and start shooting death rays at everything that moves. Yes, there is a certain sense of *innocence* to the Martians, who carry on with child-like glee as they play gruesome practical jokes and generally have fun blowing up things. At the same time, one wants to keep seeing them go through their antics, and be soundly defeated (they're *evil* martians, after all). It's a strange and quirky brew, certainly not suitable for everyone. But if you're the kind of person who can find the humor in a scene where the martians topple the Washington Monument and push it around juuuust right so it lands on top of a Boy Scout troop trying to run away, you'll find Mars Attacks! a rewarding experience. Like a disaster movie, the story has *4* major arcs, and plenty of "hey, I know that actor!" faces in the cast: - Two vacuous TV reporters from NYC cover the aliens' arrival. - A redneck family from Kansas whose older son is on "Martian detail" at the Martian landing site in Pahrump, Nevada (an actual place!). - A motley cast of Las Vegas wheelers and dealers (including Tom Jones as himself) flee the martian troops. - The President Of The United States and various cabinet members deal with the situation (including Pierce Brosnan as a perfectly dashing and smarmy Science Advisor). This is the movie's fatal flaw: there is just too much stuff going on in the movie, and too much time wasted introducing the large cast. I'd have cut 1/4th of the movie's cast, and tightened up the pace of their introduction: most of them are eventually going to be vaporized, crushed, clobbered, stabbed, mutilated, defenestrated, and otherwise disposed of anyway. Bring the martians on, they're the true stars of Mars Attacks!. Don't get me wrong, though: I enjoyed Mars Attacks! quite a bit, and many of my sci-fi fan friends absolutely loved it. But, again, it's not for everyone. -- Enrique Conty | conty@cig.mot.com | http://www.mcs.net/~conty Come to Anime Central, the Midwest's Best Anime Convention! April 3-5 1998, Holiday Inn O'Hare, Rosemont, IL. (A suburb of Chicago) Visit our website at http://www.mcs.net/~docangst/3w/ac/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:23 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!demos!news.stealth.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: chuckd21@southeast.net (Chuck Dowling) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 17 Dec 1996 21:17:37 GMT Organization: Southeast Network Services, Inc. Lines: 54 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5972lh$5iq@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: chuckd21@southeast.net (Chuck Dowling) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06534 Keywords: author=Dowling Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5925 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1170 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Chuck Dowling Copyright 1996 Chuck Dowling Mars Attacks! (1996) ***** out of ***** - C:Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Martin Short, Danny DeVito, Rod Steiger, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Joe Don Baker, Natalie Portman, Christina Applegate, Lisa Marie, Tom Jones. This is director Tim Burton's finest film to date. Many will compare this tale of Martians who invade Earth to Independence Day, but even though the stories are similar, they really are two distinctly different films. However as a whole, Mars Attacks is much more entertaining than ID4, and I loved ID4. You really have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy this film. It is completely wacked-out and unlike anything you've ever seen. Once the silly tone of the film is set, it's easy to just sit back and throw logic out the window because logic and comedy just don't mix. The plot is simple: Martians invade the Earth. But it's different than any other invasion film. Usually it's the evil aliens versus the heroic humans. This time however, it's the goofy aliens versus the equally goofy humans. The Martians, who are all computer generated, are just about the funniest things I've seen in a long time. They look funny, they move funny, and their "language" is hilarious. And about the special effects. The effects in Mars Attacks! are just about the most flawless ones I've seen to date. The computer animation of the martians combined with the goofy personalities they are given makes them seem 100% real. There are just a couple of scenes that don't work, mainly those involving Sarah Jessica Parker and Pierce Brosnan on board an alien ship. Also, Glenn Close overacts tremendously in her (thankfully) very limited screen time, so much so that I actually applauded silently when her character meets her demise. But there are many big laughs in the film, as I said, if you are in the right mood. Could it have been funnier? Certainly. Was it funny enough? Yes. Was I entertained? Absolutely. On a personal note, I'd like to thank whomever cast Rod Steiger (my favorite actor) in the film as war-crazy General Decker. Finally, after many very small parts in direct to video garbage and minor TV roles, Steiger is back on the big screen in a real movie that many people will see. While he's not given the type of role that you can give a real "performance" in, he does the job well and has some good lines of dialogue. The preview audience I saw the film with really seemed to enjoy him. -- Chuck Dowling Visit Chuck's Movie Reviews at http://users.southeast.net/~chuckd21/ Over 1,600 movies rated and/or reviewed! Movie news, box office reports, film related links, and reader's polls and reviews. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Dec 19 22:14:24 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: mleeper@lucent.com (Mark R. Leeper) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 17 Dec 1996 21:21:28 GMT Organization: Lucent Technologies Lines: 84 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5972so$5j1@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> ~Reply-To: mleeper@lucent.com NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06536 Keywords: author=Leeper Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5924 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1169 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Mark R. Leeper Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper Capsule: There are a few nice moments of MARS ATTACKS! that remind one of the creative fun and kinky sadism of the original trading cards, but mostly we have the story lost in silliness in a vain attempt to be funny. Tim Burton had a great cast and great special effects, but little understanding of the strength of the material those bubble gum cards offered. Turning the "Mars Attacks!" cards into this film may be the biggest waste of a good idea you will see in a major film this year. Rating: low 0 (-4 to +4) This year has reeled from two major films made that are tributes to George Pal's 1953 film THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. INDEPENDENCE DAY is, of course, already one of the most financially successful films of all time. Tim Burton's MARS ATTACKS! is just now being loosed on theaters. Following the release of WAR OF THE WORLDS, a whole generation of fantasy film fans grew up with the images from that film engraved on their memories. The images of the planet Earth being trounced by the weapons of alien super-science inspired imitations like EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS, THE MYSTERIANS, and BATTLE IN OUTER SPACE. In another medium, Topps Bubble Gum released a series of trading cards to cash in on these images. The "Mars Attacks!" cards were an updating of the gratuitous sadism of the earlier "Horrors of War" trading cards. They added a generous injection of imaginative science fictional weapons to more effectively melt the flesh from the poor victims' bones. The most memorably card shows a pet dog being turned into a skeleton. There was not a lot of plot to the story told on the back of the cards except that the Martians came and blasted away at everything, so (if I remember correctly) we Earthlings went to Mars and blew it up. Now inspired by this rather rudimentary but image-rich story Tim Burton has made a film with his own version of the story. It seems like a natural matching since Burton films specialize in being image-rich with rudimentary stories. This is a wedge-shaped film with its highest point in a genuinely nightmarish image before the opening credits. I was tempted to feel at this point that perhaps Burton really did understand the style and kinky imagination of the "Mars Attacks!" cards and was steeling myself for harrowing and delicious film experience. This is followed by a nearly as impressive image of a vast armada of flying saucers picking up from Mars and converging on our own green planet. Good stuff so far. From there the film introduces us to several groups of characters, a sort of cross-section of America in a sort of hideous mosaic. We see a trailer park family from some prairie state. We meet a vulgar entrepreneur wanting to build a Las Vegas casino. And as a sort of first among equals we meet the over-ripe President of the United States (Jack Nicholson) and his weird entourage. Then for a half hour the script bogs down as we meet all these people and the people around them without getting to know them very well. Then for a while the story is fun again. But only for a while. The real problem with MARS ATTACKS! is the deterioration of the script. It starts with a serious plotline, then begins treating the plot in a tongue-in-cheek manner. From there it starts adding jokes, and finally the whole plotline turns into a joke. Eventually the film is doing anything it can to milk laughs from the material in the worst traditions of THE CANNONBALL RUN. Each step is away from the imagination that made the cards exciting to adolescents and towards a sort of smirking patronization of the spirit of the source material. The film sports a hefty cast of familiar actors, though certainly not for the challenge of the roles. Typical is to have an actor like Rod Steiger playing a high military official who yells his strategy at the President ("Kill! Kill!! Exterminate.") Nicholson is his most overripe playing a very un-Presidential President of the United States. Also on hand are Glenn Close as the First Lady, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Tom Jones, and Michael J. Fox. One unexpectedly creative bit involves the fate of Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker. But on the whole we have familiar actors standing around to wait for a screaming death scene given to them compliments of the Martian invaders who turn out to be by far the most believable characters in the film. With a little more respect for the original material, Burton could have had a wonderful little film instead of this tiresome comedy with one or two good moments. I give it a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale. Mark R. Leeper mleeper@lucent.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Dec 30 22:48:32 1996 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!arclight.uoregon.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: klee@sdd.hp.com (Keith Lee) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 20 Dec 1996 18:42:31 GMT Organization: ? Lines: 45 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <59emmn$cuh@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: klee@sdd.hp.com (Keith Lee) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06539 Keywords: author=Lee Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5937 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1175 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Keith Lee Copyright 1996 Keith Lee Well, I bit the big one this Sunday and saw "Mars Attacks" at the nearby RB Mann's Theatre and boy, was I dissappointed. What with all those big stars and grandiose FX, the writers forgot two simple parts of the story -- like plot and characterization??!! If your love stereotypes of those who are and aren't so powerful, then you will love this movie. For example, I didn't know that most people in Kansas were pickup truck driving, tobacco chewing, trailer park living, TV watching, rifle toting, fat goobers who waved the flag and thought all Californian's were weirdos. According to this trash hash of a movie, no one who has indoor plumbing should go to Kansas. Also, did you know that every CNN-like talk show host out of the east was a vacuam head who couldn't find their rears with both hands? Same with the President and his staff: this was every Reagan/Clinton stereotype that you could think of. Everyone in the White House is a self-centered power-monger who strives for more and more fame and money no matter who gets in their way. Wow, sure makes me feel good about the ol' US of A!! We do have some heroes and heroines in this insipid piece of garbage. The nerdish son of a Kansas guerilla fighting wanna-be saves the day with his Grandmother (put in a resthome to vegitate and be forgotten by her bible-toting bigot of a son). The president's daughter plays a cute version of Chelsey who falls in love with the long-haired nerd and helps him fight off the evil Martians. With all of these one-dimensional characters, it's a shame the Martians didn't win!! There were some good parts in this movie. Rod Steiger played the stereotypical (in this movie, oh no) warhawk of a General who goes down fighting to his last breath. Underneath his Patton persona, he gives a speech that gives out the best attributes of rugged American individualism. Also, Jim Brown does in this movie what he has been doing in real life: reminding us how important men are to a family unit. He plays a down and out ex-prizefighter who works hard in Vegas to keep his wife and children fed and clothed in Washington DC. While Steiger and Brown couldn't help this turkey get off the ground, they gave excellent performances for two actors unfortunately forgotten by Hollywood's youth-crazed system. Now, should I tell you how I REALLY feel about this movie?? :-) Keith From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jan 3 13:45:27 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!nntp-oslo.UNINETT.no!nntp-trd.UNINETT.no!sn.no!nntp.uio.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!arclight.uoregon.edu!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: dsassoc@neponset.com (D&S Associates) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 30 Dec 1996 14:42:37 GMT Organization: Netcom Lines: 120 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5a8kct$l2@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: dsassoc@neponset.com (D&S Associates) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06572 Keywords: author=D&S Associates Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5979 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1178 MARS ATTACKS! Copyright 1996 D & S Associates Director Tim Burton, who brought us such celluloid treasures as "Beetlejuice" and "Edward Scissorhands", now stepa into the extravaganza spotlight with his science fiction spoof, "Mars Attacks!" Starring just about everyone in Hollywood from Jack Nicholson to Natalie Portman, "Mars Attacks!" is base on the Topps trading card series of the same name from the early 60's. Burton, using the card series for his basic story, pays homage to the grade B alien invasion films of the 50's, but, with a major difference - a $70 million budget lavishly spent on the truly spectacular special F/X! ROBIN: While "Mars Attacks!" is not the out-and-out hoot that I had high hopes for, it IS a high calibre homage, by Burton, to those campy sci-fi alien invasion classics we grew to love in the 50's and after. (I watched a marvelously bad example of the genre, recently, call "Robot Monster". It is so jaw-dropping bad that I found it impossible not to watch. I understand and embrace the decades-long affection we have for this kind of film and why Burton would want to do such a project.) "Mars Attacks!" does capture the campiness of the originals pretty well. The quality of the cast is many notches above thos in the films "Mars Attacks!" spoofs, but, they get down and dirty, anayway, and have a hell of a good time with their roles - particulary Annette Bening as the ditzy, new-age, 12-stepper, Barbara Land, who believes in the ggodness of Martian-kind, and Jim Brown as an ex-boxer-turned-Las-Vegas-casino-greeter, who goes one-on-one with a Martian leader, and WINS! Glenn Close give an amusing, but brief, turn as the First Lady. Everyone else appears to be there for the fun of it. But, the real star of of "Mars Attacks!", and the thing that dulls the camp edge Burton strives for, are the collection of absolutely fabulous special F/X. They are so seamless and eye-popping outstanding that the rest of the film takes a back seat. The homage that Burton intended is lost on the razzle dazzle of the effects. The studio, to say the least, overdid it by giving Burton way too much money. I would rather he had a smaller budget and used that brilliant imagination that has brought Burton so far. Prior to the appearance of the Martians, the movie builds slowly for the first 30 minutes. But, once the bug-eyed, big-brained, little green men arrive on screen, you can expect a wild and wooly rollercoaster ride that lasts right up to the end. The evil aliens are great and their presence represents some of the best melding of live action and animation to date. This may not be the best or funniest effort by Burton. It is his biggest, and a lot of fun, too. "Mars Attacks!" isn't great, but good, and I give it a B. LAURA: "Mars Attacks" is a big goofy spoof of 1950's B Sci-fi movies given the megabudget treatment by quirky, childlike director Tim Burton ("Ed Wood", "Batman", "Edward Scissorhands"). Burton also handily manages to skewer some of this past summer's blockbuster films such as "Independence Day" and "Twister" and wastes no time doing it - when a couple of farmers think they smell barbeque, the approaching glow on the horizon turns out to be a stampeding herd of cattle fully ablaze! It looks like everyone in Hollywood wanted to be part of the fun. "Mars Attacks" stars Jack Nicholson in dual roles of the President of the United States and a sleazy Las Vegas hotel developer, Glenn Close as the Nancy Reganish first lady, Annette Bening as a new age flake, Pierce Brosnan as a clueless scientist, Danny DeVito as an obnoxious gambler, Martin Short as the on-the-make President's press secretary, Sarah Jessica Parker as a ditzy talk show host, Michael J. Fox as her journalist boyfriend, Rod Steiger as a Dr. Strangelovish general, Lukas Haas as a doughnut shop worker (and savior of the human race), Sylvia Sidney as his grandmother, Natalie Portman as the President's daughter, Jim Brown as an ex pro fighter, Pam Grier as his ex-wife, Lisa Marie as a Martian woman and Tom Jones as himself. This isn't a film about great acting, it's more a chance to watch a huge cast having a great time, but there are a few standouts. Annette Bening is particularly amusing as the new age wacko who believes the Martians are coming to save earth. Pierce Brosnan is perfect as the alien life specialist - he does a terrific parody of his own image. Glenn Close has perfect timing in her second comedy outing of the season. Technically, "Mars Attacks" is first rate, boasting top notch special effects (the Martians were entirely computer generated). Tim Burton's regular scorer, Danny Elfman, offers suitably retro music. Costume designer Colleen Atwood produces eye-popping outfits and production designer Wynn Thomas provides the perfect locales for the action to take place. Screenwriter Jonathon Gems has written a script that keeps things moving along at a brisk pace accented by weird bursts of humor (a Martian ship zaps the Washington Monument and then nudges it in several directions in order to get it to land on a boy scout troop) and a truly bizarrely satisfying method of defeating the Martians (let's just say that it involves yodelling). This is a good bit of fun, but I wonder if it was sound filmmaking judgement. Tim Burton was able to run free in a $70 million dollar playground which had another $30 million of marketting dollars thrown at it, but I suspect "Mars Attacks" will draw mostly the core cult audience of "Ed Wood". B _______________________________________________________________________ D&S Associates - Electronic Publishers Webmasters of Neponset.Com http://www.neponset.com voicemail: (617) 329-1344 BBS: (617) 329-4751 Visit "Reeling" at http://www.neponset.com/reeling. _______________________________________________________________________ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jan 3 13:46:13 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news99.sunet.se!newsfeed.luth.se!news.luth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!news-stkh.gsl.net!news.gsl.net!sn.no!nntp.uio.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!arclight.uoregon.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!uwm.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!fnnews.fnal.gov!cbgw1.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: ram@iris3.carb.nist.gov (Ram Samudrala) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 30 Dec 1996 14:58:54 GMT Organization: The Centre for Advanced Research in Biotechnology Lines: 50 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5a8lbe$nq@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: ram@iris3.carb.nist.gov (Ram Samudrala) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06594 Keywords: author=Samudrala Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:5993 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1180 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Ram Samudrala Copyright 1996 Ram Samudrala /Mars Attacks/ is a cross section of pop-culture America: an enlightening and sarcastic vision of the current state of society. Of course, the situations in the movie are highly exaggerated, but at the end of the movie I couldn't help but wonder about the various similarities of the characters to real-world people. The movie is set in various locations, including Washington, DC (among the politically-minded people), Las Vegas (the money-minded people), and Kansas (the gun-loving people). Most apt is the setting of the first alien landing at Pahrump, a town just a few miles east of Death Valley. Throughout the movie, there are a lot of satirical jokes infused with a good black humour about American pop-culture that sometimes work and sometimes don't. But credit must be given to Tim Burton for willing to take the artistic risks he chooses to take. There are some serious problems with the execution of this movie that distract from the satire and the special effects. The primary problems include the editing of the film and the wooden-faced actors who simply appear to be going through their motions. Even though /Mars Attacks/ consist of star-studded cast, including people like Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, and Danny DeVito, there is little chemistry between them, and the time spent on each character is minimal. In fact, the martian characters stole the show more than any of their human counterparts. Among the better human characters are Nicholson as President Dale and as Art Land (a Las Vegas entrepreneur) who had some interesting and funny moments when he was in a good form, and some horrible moments when he was not, and Brosnan and Parker as Donald Kessler (a scientist expert on extraterrestrial affairs) and Nathalie Lake (a TV reporter covering the incident) manage to generate a bit of humourous interaction. But what I think makes Mars Attacks work, providing continuity even when the scenes themselves seem out of place, is Danny Elfman's score which is simply amazing. As I was watching, I felt the score tell me a story that was more obvious than the one depicting the movie. The score and the special effects, particularly in the opening scenes, blend extremely well. This is the B-movie for the 90s, and I highly recommend checking it out on the big screen. me@ram.org || http://www.ram.org || http://www.twisted-helices.com/th Movie ram-blings: http://www.ram.org/ramblings/movies.html From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jan 20 23:35:23 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!mn6.swip.net!plug.news.pipex.net!pipex!oleane!pasteur.fr!jussieu.fr!math.ohio-state.edu!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: mredman@bvoice.com (Michael Redman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 12 Jan 1997 03:55:01 GMT Organization: ... Lines: 64 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5b9nal$hqu@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: mredman@bvoice.com (Michael Redman) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06681 Keywords: author=Redman Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6075 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1192 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Michael Redman Copyright 1997 Michael Redman *1/2 (Out of ****) The bubble gum cards that this film is based on were released in the early sixties to criticism of their violent and explicit scenes of death and destruction. Thirty years later this is played for laughs. Tim Burton who gave us "Beetlejuice", "Batman" and "Edward Scissorhands" attempts a difficult task: making a purposefully bad big-budget science fiction film funnier than the unintentionally hilarious B films. How can you outdo "Plan 9"? An admirable task, it's unfortunate that he doesn't succeed. "Mars Attacks" starts off extraordinarily slow and doesn't get much better. Despite dozens of big name stars (Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Michael J. Fox, Jim Brown, Tom Jones, Rod Steiger and many more), the one-joke film falls on its face. With such a big cast, characterization is difficult and here it's not even attempted. When the main characters get fried one by one by the invaders, it's a big ho-hum. Burton obviously believes that excess is the road to success, but in this film it's just the superhighway to even more excess. Everything is big and bright from the destruction of Congress to the red and green (in celebration of Christmas?) glowing skeletons that remain after the Martians scorch earthlings with their death rays. There are a few amusing bits and excellent effects. But they're only impressive the first time you see them, not the second, and certainly not the twentieth. The film does almost work on a conceptual level. True to its origins, the movie sports grand visuals. Many of the scenes are borrowed directly from the cards and look great on the big screen. The project is much like a series of moving trading cards. Here's a cool picture -- the stampede of burning cattle is breathtaking. And there's another. I'd trade two of these for one of those. Just like cards, they look great, but then what do you do with them? In the best of all worlds, you'd take the images and design a humorous engrossing story around them. We don't live in the best of all worlds and what we get is a tedious movie with tiresome aliens that look like the puppets they are in a story inspired by "Gremlins" as much as by the gory drawings on cardboard. The film goes from one vignette to another with little connection between them. Remarkably enough for such a flashy movie, it moves at a slothful pace. And it goes on and on and on and... I'm perfectly willing to admit that there will be many who love the film, but Burton lost me with "The Nightmare Before Christmas". Perhaps I just don't get it, but I suspect that there's nothing there to get. This is a movie that the subject of one of his films, Ed Wood, could have made. The microscopic bacteria recently found on rocks possibly from Mars show more life than this film does. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence continues. [This was published in the "Bloomington Voice" 12/26/96. Michael Redman can be contacted at mredman@bvoice.com] From rec.arts.sf.reviews Mon Jan 20 23:35:28 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!enews.sgi.com!lll-winken.llnl.gov!fnnews.fnal.gov!cbgw1.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: syegul@ix.netcom.com (Serdar Yegulalp) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 12 Jan 1997 03:55:51 GMT Organization: Yo' Mama! Lines: 80 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5b9nc7$hr3@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: syegul@ix.netcom.com (Serdar Yegulalp) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #06686 Keywords: author=Yegulalp Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6084 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1194 MARS ATTAKS! A film review by Serdar Yegulalp Copyright 1997 Serdar Yegulalp I admire Tim Burton as a director, even if I don't always enjoy his movies. THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is a beautiful example of what can happen when his imagination is given free rein. MARS ATTACKS! on the other hand, feels like a dry run -- a $50,000 cheapie that someone decided to make for $50 million. See, if MARS *had* been one of the cheapies it pretends to send up, it would at least have camp value. But this is a) an expensive Hollywood production by a director whose last project was a dramatization of the life and times of a director who made just such movies, so the results seem curiously dadaistic in a way, and b) an attempt to send up camp -- which is basically bringing coals to Newcastle. Campy movies aren't worth sending up because they have already done the job for you. MARS is supposed to be campy, but it only manages to be a shaky imitation of camp. It also tries to be funny -- tries too hard, in my opinion, and is only funny in moments. As a whole, it's not funny, it's irritating, because it blows so many of its best moments by not bothering to develop them. For a movie that cost *that* much to make, it's astonishingly lazy. One of the first things we see is lots of Martian flying saucers approaching Earth -- LOTS of them, in a nicely done CGI job. What struck me is that someone went to great, loving lengths to make the saucers look as much like a mid-50's bad-SF movie flying saucer as possible. It reminded me of Warhol's soup can paintings, somehow: we are at a point where just presenting an icon is supposed to evoke something: laughs. In this case, it's camp, but as I said before, sending up camp is something of a fool's errand. You can't kid a kidder. The plot is about what you'd expect. The aliens come, there is some kind of diplomatic misuderstanding no thanks to a screwed-up translation machine, and the war is on. Actually, the movie is so clumsy in its handling of its plot that it's never clear if the Martians were just playing with our heads from the beginning, or if in fact the translation machine is screwed up, etc. Purists would no doubt insist that it's sort of beside the point, but the movie makes such a big deal out of some of these things in the first place that afterwards we wonder why they even bothered talking about them in the first place. To get laughs, of course, but the usual cliches about how the machine is "almost ready this time" aren't funny; they're hardly even groundwork for a good joke. The biggest problem with the movie is the story, or lack of one. Any one thing that's funny in a movie is even funnier when it's given a context, and the contexts in MARS ATTACKS! were skimmed over, skimped on, or handled with a clumsiness that made me wonder if the movie had received some kind of major editing-room surgery at the last minute. Some of the scenes just drift off into space, or are so jarringly contrasted with others, that it almost feels like we're channel-surfing. The Martians aren't interesting as villains, and the Earthlings that we get to see aren't that interesting as heroes. (An example: Rod Steiger plays a bullet-headed warmongering general. Period. No attempt is made to make his character *functionally* interesting: he's just an excuse for Steiger to indulge in the usual actor's business.) This is not the same as the DR. STRANGELOVE approach, in which everyone is more or less equally buffoonish; here, they're too dull, really, to be buffoonish. We don't see why the movie is wasting time with them. I mentioned the effects are clearly expensive and very well-done, but they don't serve much more of a purpose than to frantically kick the movie in the ass and drive it along. Subplots come up, are re-examined in cursory and unsatisfying ways, and many of the scenes play out to no real purpose. As a result, every joke becomes a throwaway. The movie quickly reduces itself to a pattern where lots of cameo characters are set up in walk-ons, reappear to deliver one-liners, and then get annihilated when they meet Martians. One good example of how the script wastes its time is a scene in which one of the alien bodies is being dissected. The entire punch line of the scene has the scientist character (played by Pierce Brosnan) sticking his hand into the alien's skull and coming away with a fistful of green slime. "Curious," he mutters. End of scene. This scene could have been a great source of laughs -- for instance, why didn't they take the chance to make fun of the recent "Alien Autopsy Footage!" scam? Now right there is one more funny idea, I bet, than most of the ones you could find in the movie. Final score on the Martian scale: two rayguns out of four. ____________________________________________________________________________ syegul@ix.netcom.com IRC: GinRei http://serdar.home.ml.org another worldly device... ____________________________________________________________________________ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Mar 25 15:43:40 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: s687070@iplabs.ins.gu.edu.au (Shane R. Burridge) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.past-films Date: 21 Mar 1997 19:58:09 GMT Organization: Griffith University Gold Coast Lines: 53 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5gup8h$3pc@nntpb.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: s687070@iplabs.ins.gu.edu.au (Shane R. Burridge) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #07162 Keywords: author=Burridge Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6564 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1241 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Shane R. Burridge Copyright 1997 Shane R. Burridge Mars Attacks! (1996) 102 min. I've looked forward to Tim Burton's credit sequences ever since the delirious, operatic opening moments for BATMAN RETURNS. On this score, MARS ATTACKS! doesn't disappoint - that he can make so much of so little (namely, hokey-looking saucers flying through space) is ample proof of his talent. Unfortunately, it's so tantalizingly powerful that - for a while at least - the rest of his film appears to suffer by comparison. The story, inspired by a series of trading cards, is so by-the-numbers that it hardly seems worth recounting here, but for the record: A fleet of alien spacecraft take up position in orbit around the Earth. The US president (Jack Nicholson), mistakenly persuaded of their peaceful intentions, finds himself running for cover as the White House and most of the surrounding neighborhood are suddenly laid to waste. He isn't the only one - the storyline jumps between several characters in different locations, all faced with the same crisis. If you think this sounds like the same plot used in INDEPENDENCE DAY, you're right - and this provides another rather troublesome area of comparison. ID4 was a megahit of a movie, a huge, global rocket-ride with big effects that netted big box office. MARS ATTACKS! is deliberately cheesy, a skewed marriage of mainstream pop and Burton's own eccentricity. But Burton's film has a significant saving grace: it is directed by Tim Burton. While the aliens of ID4 leveled entire cities with anonymous blasts from their huge starships, the Martians of MARS ATTACKS! work on a more.....*personal* level. It is at the point when the Martians make their first appearance that the story begins to pick up: they are hilarious, but also provide the film with an unexpectedly vicious edge. Under any other circumstances, Burton's grotesqueries would come across as merely violent (I don't doubt that many younger viewers in the session I attended gathered enough material for a few week's worth of nightmares) but his idiosyncratic goofiness still presides. It's very likely that MARS ATTACKS! won't be as funny as some moviegoers would hope, nor provide the big-budget sci-fi thrills that others may be expecting. The main reason to see it is to behold Burton at work, once again re-inventing the pop culture that defined his childhood. And of course, there is the appropriately stellar cast he has assembled - as if he didn't have enough to contend with while wreaking havoc on the planet he also has to juggle enough screen time for the likes of Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Rod Steiger, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Martin Short, Danny de Vito, Tom Jones, Natalie Portman, and Joe Don Baker. It's amazing that the Martians even get a look-in - but they'll be who you remember most afterwards. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue May 6 13:34:02 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!demos!demos2!hermes.sovam.com!sovam!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!howland.erols.net!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: mendbgbs@ix.netcom.com (Scott Mendelson) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 21 Apr 1997 17:26:46 GMT Organization: Netcom Lines: 82 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5jg80m$28s@nntpa.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: mendbgbs@ix.netcom.com (Scott Mendelson) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #07354 Keywords: author=Mendelson Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6762 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1254 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by Scott Mendelson Copyright 1997 Scott Mendelson 1996 103 MIN. rated "PG-13" (extreme stylized death and destruction, brief gore, slight profanity) Directed by Tim Burton Starring: Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Benning, Pierce Brosnan Jim Brown, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lucas Haas, Natalie Portman Tom Jones, Sylvia Sidney, Rod Steiger, Paul Winfield, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, Danny Devito, Joe Don Baker, Pam Grier, Lisa Marie, Jack Nicholson, The Martians This article should probably be taken with a grain of salt due to the fact that I believe Tim Burton to be a God among men, incapable of error and my idol in the filmmaking world. "Ack-Ack-Ack-Ack!" translation: Mars Attacks! is not only the funniest film of 1996(but, for artistic merit, Fargo is tops for 96), but the funniest film that I've seen since Airplane!! It's a terrific mixture of top-notch writing and acting, THE best computer animation I have ever seen, and, best of all, a healthy dose of VERY macabre bad taste. After thousands of martian ships are spotted surrounding Earth, the President(Jack Nicholson), the First Lady(Glenn Close), the scientist(Pierce Brosnan), the press secretary(Martin Short), and the generals(Rod Steiger and Paul Winfield) try to decide what to do. Brosnan and Winfield suggest a peaceful welcome while Steiger suggests they declare war on these bug-eyed, big brained "things". An official meeting is set up in a desert, several of the martians step out to greet the thousands of on-lookers, and they declare that they come in peace. At this point, they whip out their ray guns and take out hundreds of earthlings, including several of the big stars. In fact, one of the main pleasures of this epic is the growing realization that few of your favorite stars are going to make it to the end credits. This being a Tim Burton film, the survivors consists of those whose standing in society is lesser. While politicians and entrepreneurs are blown to bits, a down on his luck boxer and a southern kid, who rush to save their grandmothers, live. As usual, Burton sides with the outsiders. We love him for it. Be warned, this is a very, very sick movie. Millions of innocent people die horrible deaths: men, women, children(a group of cub scouts in one really funny but twisted scene), none are spared! And yes, unlike ID4, this flick has the guts to kill animals! And, again, unlike ID4, where popcorn was thrown at my head for doing so, you can root for the aliens, because Burton is rooting for them too. Technically, the martians look great. With greenish-blue skin tone, bulging eyes, and huge brains, they don't speak English, they do understand when earthlings talk. They speak in some kind of gibberish, and Earth uses a translator to communicate with them: "ACK, ACK, ACK, ACK, ACK!" translation: "We Come in Peace!" The best thing about this film is that, unlike most invasion flicks, where they just feel like props, the aliens actually have a personality. The FX are so convincing, and the invaders are so unique in nature that the martians become full-blown characters. The martians are not truly evil, but fiendish little pranksters who basically set out to destroy the Earth because it'll be a fun way to kill a weekend(pun intended). They actually take time to enjoy the mayhem while performing demented experiments on those poor earthlings(wait till you see what happens to Pierce Brosnan and Sarah Jessica Parker) and destroying many a famous landmark(the Easter Island statues, the Eiffel Tower, etc.) with glee. At times, they seem to be like a distant cousin to the Gremlins, but a lot smarter. While the film's first 40 minutes introduces its many human characters and thus, is occasionally dull(grade: C+) the last hour is pure "Burton-ion" craziness(A+++). And although I wanted the martians to triumph, the way that the martians finally meet their doom is one of the decade's best gags(and certainly more creative than ID4's: "let's give them a computer virus" snore). While obviously not for all tastes, the film has probably got the most creative way ever for disposing of a hydrogen bomb. A+ Note: Despite my many objections, it may be worth noting that I did enjoy Independence Day as fun, slick, big-budget, garbage. But Ronald Emmerich is no Tim Burton. From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue May 6 13:35:39 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!solace!nntp.uio.no!uninett.no!stdio!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!worldnet.att.net!cbgw2.lucent.com!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!not-for-mail From: david.wilcock@btinternet.com (David Wilcock) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1997) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.current-films,rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 22 Apr 1997 15:18:36 GMT Organization: - Lines: 42 Sender: eleeper@lucent.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Approved: eleeper@lucent.com Message-ID: <5jiksc$570@nntpa.cb.lucent.com> Reply-To: david.wilcock@btinternet.com (David Wilcock) NNTP-Posting-Host: mtvoyager.mt.lucent.com Summary: r.a.m.r. #07367 Keywords: author=Wilcock Originator: ecl@mtvoyager Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6767 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1257 MARS ATTACKS! A film review by David Wilcock Copyright 1997 David Wilcock A sci fi/comedy starring Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Annette Benning, Glenn Close, Martin Short and other stars. A WARNER BROS PICTURE The martians have landed in this hillarous Tim Burton movie. Before entering the cinema, I was initially a little bit nervous about what this film would be like. Many people were saying that this film was silly rubbish, and there was no point to it all. How wrong they were. I left this film feeling much happier than I was before I entered the cinema. The story is about Martians attacking Earth. Using ray guns (hooray!) they generally cause havoc around the U.S and other countries. Nicholson plays the president who must try to stop invasion, and also taking advice from his loopy officials. But, basically, its a load of set pieces showing the Martians destroying Earth. The way people are killed by the ray guns is great, they is a hillarous (and mildly disturbing scene) involving a Martian lady, a mad general who just wants to nuke the aliens away, (and ends up getting squashed by an aliens foot) and a gory finale involving lots of alien heads exploding. But, most of all, this film is fun. The Martians are full of character, the performances are spot on, and the all star cast help make the film more enjoyable. The film is a million times better then the dire INDEPENDANCE DAY, and is a real tribute to the tacky '50s invasion movies. They are is a great score by Danny Elfman, and lots of laughs. This has to be the best invasion I've seen for a long time. RATING=**** out of ***** REVIEW BY DAVID WILCOCK =============================== DAVID WILCOCK EMAIL:david.wilcock@btinternet.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Oct 30 14:13:29 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!luth.se!news.algonet.se!newsfeed.direct.ca!news.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: ChadPolenz@aol.com (Chad Polenz) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Mars Attacks! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 13 Oct 1997 04:07:33 GMT Organization: None Lines: 70 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <61s6q5$73d$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer18.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 876715653 7277 (None) 140.142.64.2 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #09313 Keywords: author=polenz X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer18.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8651 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1555 Mars Attacks! Chad'z rating: **1/2 (out of 4 = OK) 1996, PG-13, 106 minutes [1 hour, 46 minutes] [comedy/satire/science fiction] starring: Jack Nicholson (President Dale, Art Land), Pierce Brosnan (Donald Kessler), Martin Short (Jerry Ross), Jim Brown (Byron Williams), written by Jonathan Gems, produced by Tim Burton, Larry J. Franco, directed by Tim Burton, based on the Topps trading card series. seen on home video by myself on Saturday, October 11, 1997 at 7 p.m. It's funny how a punctuation mark can make or break a movie. From title alone, you'd think "Mars Attacks!" would be a cartoony black comedy or some kind of thrilling sci-fi movie, but to understand how the film really works, just drop the exclamation point. Mars attacks - so what? As with any alien invasion story, this film sets up its framework by showing characters all over the country who are somehow connected. Of course numerous sub-plots are established, but since this is a satire we're not asked to take much of anything seriously. First there's Jack Nicholson who seems depressed playing the role of President Dale - probably because Dale is the calmest character he's ever played. Dale's staff is made up of generic characters including Pierce Brosnan as Donald Kessler, a scientist who tells the president not to panic when Martians surround Earth. Not surprisingly there's also the bossy, hyperactive general who keeps saying we should "nuke 'em!" (this routine is so old and unfunny it's almost sad). There's also Martin Short as White House Press Secretary Jerry Ross who does his typical spiel (enough said). In fact, it's really not worth mentioning all the characters here because there are so many of them and they're all boring, familiar caricatures. They're meant to be zany but the atmosphere is so dull nothing seems witty enough to be funny. It takes over a half hour before any real action takes place, and although the special effects are fantastic, they don't do much to save the lame screenplay. The Martians are weird-looking aliens who blast humans with ray guns and quack like ducks. It's obvious their malevolence is a parody of aliens in films like these, but the film doesn't go far enough to make them the funny cartoons they are meant to be. Remember how the evil "Gremlins" had individual personalities? That should happen here, but doesn't. And even when this is attempted, it doesn't really work. This movie probably wasn't intended to be just a live-action cartoon and/or a spoof of sci-fi movies, it's meant to be a humorous political statement through satire. Burton attempts to make some themes about the obsession of the media, but he doesn't nearly utilize the potential. After the halfway point, the film is just small chunks of pointless scenes meant to be funny but aren't. For example: the rednecks with guns who say, "They're not taking the TV," or the hotel mogul Art Land (Nicholson again) who says, "Even aliens gotta sleep somewhere." "Mars Attacks!" is like a glass of flat soda where the taste is still there, but there's no pep to it. The same thing happens here - it's a film with an all-star cast, and a story that should be easy to satirize, but everybody seems too bored to make an effort. Please visit Chad'z Movie Page @ http://members.aol.com/ChadPolenz - over 160 new and old films reviewed in depth, not just blind ratings and quick capsules. Also, check out The FIRST Shay Astar Web Page @ http://members.aol.com/ChadPolenz/ShayAstar.html e-mail: ChadPolenz@aol.com (C) 1997 Chad Polenz From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Oct 30 14:13:58 1997 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!news.algonet.se!4.1.16.34.MISMATCH!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams From: Ted Prigge Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Mars Attacks! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 27 Oct 1997 03:31:35 GMT Organization: None Lines: 79 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6311un$l2q$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: chandlerb@geocities.com NNTP-Posting-Host: homer10.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 877923095 21594 (None) 140.142.64.7 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #09526 Keywords: author=prigge X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer10.u.washington.edu Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:8833 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1572 MARS ATTACKS! (1996) A Film Review by Ted Prigge Copyright 1997 Ted Prigge Director: Tim Burton Writers: Jonathan Gems and Tim Burton (based on the trading cards) Starring: Jack Nicholson (twice), Glen Close, Pierce Brosnan, Annette Benning, Rod Steiger, Lucas Haas, Natalie Portman, Martin Short, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tom Jones, Sylvia Sydney, Joe Don Baker, Lisa Marie, Danny DeVito, Christina Applegate Back before this came out, I was proclaiming that without a shadow of a doubt that Tim Burton's "Mars Attacks!" was to be the "Dr. Strangelove" of the 90s. I mean, the previews looked like it would be hysterical, cartoonish, and even contain some good old Kubrickian satire. So much for hype. "Mars Attacks!" was probably the biggest let-down since the second season of "Twin Peaks." I mean, no, it's not a bad movie, and yeah, it's pretty much over-bashed (even Kevin Smith said his "Mallrats" wasn't nearly as bad as this - I kinda disagreed). But all I wanted was some good laughs and some satire. Yes, it suceeds in spoofing disaster flicks, which have been waning as of late (sob), but it's just not that funny. Based on some ultra-violent collecting cards from the 50s (the most original source I've heard in recent memory), the film tells the story of aliens arriving from, well, Mars, and giving a kind of neutral message to earthlings. Scientist Pierce Brosnan says they're intelligent, and just want to chill with us. General Rod Steiger (not his real title) is convinced they're more belligerent than those aliens in "Starship Troopers," and we should just nuke them. President Jack Nicholson (again, not his real title) seems to be just confused. After about a half hour or so of unfunny jokes, we FINALLY get to the first meetings with the aliens. In a brilliantly executed scene, the part-Woodstock/part-military peace mission turns into a gorefest, with the aliens shooting everyone in sight with these weird ray guns, which ignite people into skeletons. Another meeting to see if it was a "mistake" (since a dove was the catalyst in the aliens' anger) results in another one. The second one (which was in the great previews) isn't nearly as funny as the first one, but things take off from here. Now, if you've seen enough disaster flicks, you know that the most interesting part is not really the special effects, but the wildly eccentric amount of characters we get to know. From Shelley Winters as a diver in "The Poseidon Adventure" to the hapless Fred Aistaire in "The Towering Inferno" to, well, Randy Quaid in "Independence Day," the film rests on the characters...or, sorry, characateurs. And we get some funny ones, and some boring ones, but none wacky enough for the film. To also staying with disaster pic spoofing, the film intercuts between several locations, including Vegas, the government (and the "Dr. Strangelove"-esque war room, although hardly as menacing), a hick town, and even the alien ship. And we, of course, get the wide variety of wacky and eccentric chracters that congregated in the disaster epics, and subsequently died, so we could all get off on a big star (like Charlton Heston) dying. But when it ends, and you feel violated. I mean, the previews were probably the best of the season, in ways of how cool they made the movie look. But, really, the film isn't nearly as funny as they were. Most of the funny jokes are in the previews (how rare!). But when the aliens turn up, it's pretty enjoyable. Also, the film kind of cheated us with prayers of satire. Not only is the word "nuke" tossed around as much as "commie" was in Dr. Strangelove, and Nicholson has two roles (one less than Sellars did in "Strangelove"), but it arrived in the wake of the "ID4" phenomenon, promising to crack the hell out of it. And when that didn't deliver, I felt a tad let-down, to say the least. In short, "Mars Attacks!" may be Tim Burton's worst flick, but it's not THAT bad. But it could have been so much more. Oh well. "Superman Lives" comes out soon. MY RATING (out of 4): **1/2 Homepage at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8335/ From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Jan 30 16:27:02 1998 From: "Andy Wright" Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Mars Attacks! (1996) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.movies Date: 27 Jan 1998 06:05:59 GMT Organization: None Lines: 36 Approved: graham@ee.washington.edu Message-ID: <6ajtg7$5v4$1@nntp5.u.washington.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: homer30.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp5.u.washington.edu 885881159 6116 (None) 140.142.64.1 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: grahams Summary: r.a.m.r. #10774 Keywords: author=wright X-Questions-to: movie-rev-mod@www.ee.washington.edu X-Submissions-to: movie-reviews@www.ee.washington.edu Originator: grahams@homer30.u.washington.edu Path: news.ifm.liu.se!genius.dat.hk-r.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!newspeer.monmouth.com!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!Sprint!worldnet.att.net!news.u.washington.edu!grahams Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:9993 rec.arts.sf.reviews:1735 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/ e-mail louk@seanet.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Jul 8 07:08:12 2003 From: Dragan Antulov Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Retrospective: Mars Attacks! (1996) Approved: ramr@rottentomatoes.com Followup-To: rec.arts.movies.past-films Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 19:02:12 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-RAMR-ID: 34899 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1145101 X-RT-TitleID: 1074473 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 3/10 Summary: r.a.m.r. #34899 X-Questions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Submissions-to: ramr@rottentomatoes.com X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 63 Path: news.island.liu.se!news.Update.UU.SE!puffinus.its.uu.se!newsfeed.sunet.se!news01.sunet.se!uninett.no!news.eunet.no!uio.no!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!news.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: news.island.liu.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:6727 rec.arts.sf.reviews:570 MARS ATTACKS! (1996) A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003 In 1990s Hollywood discovered new sources of inspiration, and sometimes those sources of inspiration proved to be more than unusual. In case of Tim Burton some of those sources were downright bizarre. The best example was his 1996 science fiction parody MARS ATTACKS!, based on the set of 1960s trading cards. Just as the title says, plot deals with planet Earth being invaded by aliens from Mars. They come to Earth in thousands of flying sources, armed with powerful ray guns and sadistic sense of humour. Their apparent aim is to exterminate all life, including humans, and they have great fun in doing so. However, clueless US President (played by Jack Nicholson) would need extra proof before he gets convinced in true nature of Martian intentions. By the time he knows what awaits Earth, it is too late - unstoppable Martians are killing and destroying all in their path. However, small band of survivors, that includes donut shop clerk from Kansas (played by Lukas Haas) would by chance discover a way to defeat the invaders. In 1994 Tim Burton directed ED WOOD and thus paid the ultimate homage to Ed Wood, filmmaker (in)famous as the author of the worst film ever made. But it seems that Burton wanted to go even further and make film with reputation equal to PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, Wood's best known achievement. Unlike Wood, he had some 70 million US$ of budget at his disposal and this budget is very visible in the film. There are plenty of CGI shots and the cast is really impressive, with some famous actors like Nicholson having to play more than one role. However, all their efforts seem wasted because the characters they play are so one-dimensional and annoying that the audience wouldn't notice or even care when they get pulverised by Martians. Another big problem of MARS ATTACKS! is lack of humour in Jonathan Gems' script - and since this is comedy, that means that the audience would have to watch a single joke all over again. However, occasionally there are few hits among many misses and those patient enough to sit through the entire film would be awarded with an memorable image or two. But those memorable images are hardly the reason to be subjected to MARS ATTACKS!, the most unpleasant surprise to all those who had based their expectations on the previous work of someone like Tim Burton. RATING: 3/10 (+) Review written on May 22nd 2003 Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.purger.com/users/drax/reviews.htm - Movie Reviews in English http://www.ofcs.org - Online Film Critics Society ========== X-RAMR-ID: 34899 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1145101 X-RT-TitleID: 1074473 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 3/10