Mission to Mars
*1/2 out of ****
Year: 2000. Starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle, Connie Nielsen, Jerry O' Connell, Kim Delaney, Elise Neal, Peter Outerbridge, Armin Mueller-Stahl. Written by Lowell Cannon (story), Jim Thomas & John Thomas (story & screenplay), Graham Yost (screenplay). Directed by Brian De Palma. Rated PG.
There should be a requirement that a potential viewer be under a certain film IQ in order to see "Mission to Mars." There are probably quite a few people who are going to enjoy it, and most of them will probably be those who have seen very few films of its kind. But there are those who will not, and those will most likely be people who have already seen one or more of the following movies: "2001: A Space Odyssey," "Armageddon," "Apollo 13," "The Abyss," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Alien," and "Aliens." Why? Because there is not one original idea in "Mission to Mars." All of it is cribbed from other films (and in most cases, better films). If this is the sort of thing you don't mind, you might like the film. Of course, there are other reasons not to like "Mission to Mars," the main one being a script written by people who seem to assume their audience is filled with people who haven't used their brains in some time, and who don't intend to start during the film's running time. "Mission to Mars" manages to be both stupid and boring at the same time.
The plot, cribbed greatly from "2001," concerns a team sent to Mars, the first manned trip ever made to the red planet. Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) leads the team, jointly formed of Americans and Russians. The team encounters a mysterious monolith that emits a strange pulse (this being nothing like the pulse-emitting monolith in "2001" -- that one was on the *moon*), but when they try to study it, a giant sand tornado comes out of the top and swallows them (all except Luke, who survives long enough to send a garbled message back to the rotating space station, which looks strangely like the rotating space station in "2001"). A rescue mission is planned with husband & wife team Woody Blake (Tim Robbins) and Terri Fisher (Connie Nielsen), obligatory pilot with a troubled past Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), and extra crew member Phil Ohlmyer (Jerry O'Connell) along for the ride. After some zero-gravity dancing, they run into problems when one of their engines is blown, forcing them to attempt a desperate landing aboard a supply vessel. Now stranded on Mars with minimal supplies, the team must decide whether or not it can risk entering the monolith or if they should return home. After all, that monolith just might contain information about how life originated on Earth.
"Mission to Mars" is one of those films that makes a critic wonder where to start when talking about all the things that are wrong with it, so let's start with one of the things that does work: Director Brian De Palma manages to create some eerie tension in a few scenes during the middle of the film. That's it. Everything else fails. The failure isn't De Palma's fault; he's working from an atrocious script. Only during the sequence aboard the ship (looking an awful lot like the Jupiter vessel in "2001") where the rescue team's air begins running out and they must frantically search for the hole and patch it up does "Mission to Mars" come to life. A scene where they attempt to save a comrade floating away into space also provides some tension, until you realize that the entire danger/more danger/attempted rescue sequence has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film; it's just a contrived way to generate thrilling scenes. Take it out, and the plot isn't affected in any way. The sequence also suffers from a few plot holes (as does the rest of the film): Why is the ship's computer (which sounds strangely like HAL from, uh, "2001") able to detect a hole in the main chamber but not one in the engine? Why did Tim Robbins' character have to go outside the ship when the solution easily presented itself from inside? Shouldn't the astronauts be better trained to deal with a hull breach?
Why are the characters such idiots? Because the script makes little attempt to properly develop them. All the "conflict" is clumsily delivered in excruciatingly obvious exposition in the opening scene (which rips off Orson Welles and Robert Altman by utilizing a long opening tracking shot) during which the characters repeatedly tell each other about things all of them should already know: "Jim, it's too bad you can't go on this mission because you were determined 'psychologically inadequate' because your wife died right before you were to go on the mission together" -- does anyone really talk like this? Can't we find out these things in a less grating matter, like maybe in a flashback? The whole film is like that. The filmmakers are not content to merely show us something and assume we know what's going on; they must *tell* us exactly what we're looking at *every* time.
Sample dialogue from the film: (Shot of Mars) Astronaut A: "Look, there's Mars" Astronaut B: "You sure that's Mars?" Astronaut A: "Yeah, that's Mars all right." Astronaut C: "Hey, are you guys looking at Mars?"
That exchange isn't actually in "Mission to Mars," but I wouldn't be surprised if it were. For all their cribbing from Kubrick, Spielberg, James Cameron, and even Ron Howard, the makers of this film haven't learned to do something all those directors did very well: show and don't tell. De Palma used to know how, but seems to have forgotten. This is mentally-challenged filmmaking; they assume the audience won't get what's going on, so they explain everything five times over. Fourth-graders may appreciate this, but more learned viewers will have their intelligence insulted.
The principal actors sleepwalk their way through "Mission to Mars," never managing to do away with an apparent "I'm just here to get a paycheck" attitude. Cheadle stumbles over his awkward lines. Armin Mueller-Stahl manages to thoroughly embarrass himself in an unbilled cameo. Robbins puts his game face on and phones in his standard "decent guy" performance. And Sinise hams it up with "wistful" facial expressions while watching tapes of his dead wife (played by Kim Delaney, who only has one scene during which she still manages to deliver some ridiculous dialogue in a heavy-handed monologue about the meaning of life), and especially during the stolen-from-no-less-than-three-movies (a lollipop to whoever names them) conclusion, which combines endless, obvious explanation and sub-par CGI effects with gagging sentimentality and is sure to alienate any viewers who had been enjoying the show up until then. And of course, these aliens from Mars who facilitated the evolution of life on Earth are entirely different from the aliens in "2001" who facilitated the evolution of life on Earth; those aliens were from an *unknown* world.
It could be said that fans of brainless action films might enjoy "Mission to Mars," but such a comment ignores the fact that the film is also incredibly slow-going. Leisurely pacing might have helped a film with a little more substance to it, but all of the substance of "Mission to Mars" has been stolen from other films, and those other films dealt with their ideas in a much more thoughtful fashion and generally contained more engaging characters. Supposedly we're intended to choke up when one character decides not to return home at the end of this one (totally different from the one-character-decides-not-to-return ending of "Armageddon"), but I suspect most people will either be laughing or groaning. Me, I alternated between the two. There is only one good thing about the way "Mission to Mars" finally ends: the fact that the movie is over.
-reviewed by Shay Casey
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