Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Scott Renshaw)
Date: 16 Dec 1996 14:48:23 GMT

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.

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