Subject: REVIEW: MARS ATTACKS! (1996)

From: [email-masked] (Andrew Hicks)
Date: 16 Dec 1996 15:52:33 GMT

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.

--

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