

MISSION TO MARS
RATING: 4 /10 --> This movie sucks

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So what do you get when you mix together plot elements from various
successful sci-fi films such as CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, 2001: A
SPACE ODYSSEY, APOLLO 13 and CONTACT? Well, whatever it is, you'd sure as
hell hope that it would be a thousand times better than this shoddy attempt
at such a melange, considering the disastrous results we're left with here.
This is a film that takes a little bit of everything, but ultimately adds up
to a lot of nothing! It's like I said...this movie sucks.

PLOT:
A rescue crew of astronauts is sent down to Mars in the year 2020, after an
unknown energy force leads to a loss of contact with the previous gang of
space aviators to visit the red planet.

CRITIQUE:
Extremely underwhelming is the best way to describe this movie. Uneven,
would be another. The trailer for this movie actually showed some promise,
the buzz around it had been so-so, and even the film itself starts off with
a decent first twenty minutes, all leading you to believe that it's actually
going to go "somewhere". But it isn't long before the entire movie
downshifts into neutral, features more space walks than anything interesting
on the cherry-colored planet, tries too hard to get us into the "pain" of
some its characters and unsuccessfully tosses some romance into the mix. In
a sci-fi movie? Well, I don't know, much of it just seemed like a bunch of
nerdies talking techie jargon for about an hour and a half, only to figure
out some big secret in the end, a secret which practically had me yawning
with excitement. Ultimately, this is a movie that starts off with a decent
premise, joins the crew in their "misadventures in space" for the main crux
of its journey, and eventually settles down for one of the most
anti-climactic endings this side of CONTACT. Mind you, if you enjoyed that
film's shrug-of-the-shoulders ending, you might just enjoy this frivolous
ditty as well. Of course, I don't remember CONTACT having such obvious and
painfully distracting computer generated effects at its end of story. Ugh.
What a friggin' mess.

Films like this generally get me wondering about the brass in Hollywood
again. Didn't anybody recognize the crappiness in this script? Didn't they
read the bad dialogue, the cheezy lines, the obvious derivative nature of
the work (Mind you, with a director like DePalma at the helm, that ain't
saying much!). Of course, you can't really blame the brass for the inclusion
of Jerry O'Connell in this fine crew of thespians. 'Nuff said. Neither can
you blame them for DePalma cranking up the juice on the film's musical score
during the last fifteen minutes, presumably in order to wake the audience up
(Okay, we get it Brian, this scene is supposed to be
powerful...wow...yawn...my ears hurt!). So is anything salvageable in this
movie? Sure. Gary Sinise does another great job, as does Cheadle, the film
doesn't completely bore you as much as it just moves along slowly without
anything really interesting happening, and yes, the "sand-twister" effect
that you see in the commercial is well done. Other than that? I guess I
could say that I admire how filmmakers have become so much more devious in
their product placement strategies...oops, did I say "admire", I meant "am
disgusted"! All in all, this movie delivers very little in actual substance,
offers two-bit dialogue masked in a lot of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, pretends to
be deep when really it's just sappy, and eventually just settles into an
ending which, other than presenting us with a pathetic computer graphic as a
part of the story, gives us little more to think about than how we might be
able to get our money back for sitting through this rehashed dreck. Go see
THE NINTH GATE...now there's a great movie!

And on a personal note, I think it's time for DePalma to stop worrying so
much about his proverbial 12-minute uninterrupted film sequences, and start
worrying more about how crappy his movies are getting.

Review Date: March 8, 2000
Director: Brian DePalma
Writers: Lowell Cannon, Jim Thomas and John Thomas
Producer: Tom Jacobson
Actors: Gary Sinise as Jim McConnell
Don Cheadle as Luc Goddard
Tim Robbins as Woody Blake
Jerry O'Connell as Phil Ohlmyer
Genre: Science-Fiction
Year of Release: 2000
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(c) 2000 Berge Garabedian