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
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