MARS ATTACKS!
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1997 Shane R. Burridge
Mars Attacks! (1996) 102 min.
I've looked forward to Tim Burton's credit sequences ever since the delirious, operatic opening moments for BATMAN RETURNS. On this score, MARS ATTACKS! doesn't disappoint - that he can make so much of so little (namely, hokey-looking saucers flying through space) is ample proof of his talent. Unfortunately, it's so tantalizingly powerful that - for a while at least - the rest of his film appears to suffer by comparison.
The story, inspired by a series of trading cards, is so by-the-numbers that it hardly seems worth recounting here, but for the record: A fleet of alien spacecraft take up position in orbit around the Earth. The US president (Jack Nicholson), mistakenly persuaded of their peaceful intentions, finds himself running for cover as the White House and most of the surrounding neighborhood are suddenly laid to waste. He isn't the only one - the storyline jumps between several characters in different locations, all faced with the same crisis. If you think this sounds like the same plot used in INDEPENDENCE DAY, you're right - and this provides another rather troublesome area of comparison. ID4 was a megahit of a movie, a huge, global rocket-ride with big effects that netted big box office. MARS ATTACKS! is deliberately cheesy, a skewed marriage of mainstream pop and Burton's own eccentricity. But Burton's film has a significant saving grace: it is directed by Tim Burton. While the aliens of ID4 leveled entire cities with anonymous blasts from their huge starships, the Martians of MARS ATTACKS! work on a more.....*personal* level. It is at the point when the Martians make their first appearance that the story begins to pick up: they are hilarious, but also provide the film with an unexpectedly vicious edge. Under any other circumstances, Burton's grotesqueries would come across as merely violent (I don't doubt that many younger viewers in the session I attended gathered enough material for a few week's worth of nightmares) but his idiosyncratic goofiness still presides.
It's very likely that MARS ATTACKS! won't be as funny as some moviegoers would hope, nor provide the big-budget sci-fi thrills that others may be expecting. The main reason to see it is to behold Burton at work, once again re-inventing the pop culture that defined his childhood. And of course, there is the appropriately stellar cast he has assembled - as if he didn't have enough to contend with while wreaking havoc on the planet he also has to juggle enough screen time for the likes of Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Rod Steiger, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Martin Short, Danny de Vito, Tom Jones, Natalie Portman, and Joe Don Baker. It's amazing that the Martians even get a look-in - but they'll be who you remember most afterwards.
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