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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