IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 46 minutes, rated 6.3 by 191272 time wasters like me.
Genre: Sy Fy and Self-Indulgence
Verdict: Cut! Cut! Cut!
‘The Martians are coming!’ ‘The Martians are coming!’ ‘The Martians are coming!’
Got it.
What is worse they are just like the fraternity brothers, stupid, cruel, rude, ugly, and relentless. About twenty minutes too relentless.
One fine day an ensemble set of characters from a big cast list discovers that ‘The Martians are coming!’ and react to that in different ways. That is the first half. Some are afraid. Others hopeful. Some don’t notice. Others don’t care. Scholars rush to speculate. Talking heads do.
Then the Martians come and exploding heads follow. Many exploding heads. Many, many, many. And then some more. Second half.
In the first half a weak-kneed liberal president concludes they are coming in peace, though no one wonders why it takes so many of them to come in peace. Every courtesy is extended including overlooking the slaughter of the first welcoming party. There follows more slaughter and more forgiveness. Is there a parallel to the weak-kneed native indians who kept trying to cooperate with the white man and got slaughtered for their trouble. It seems an obvious comparison but it is not made here.
In the second half it is all out war. Except none of the weapons Earthlings use do any good. Not even the method acting of a geriatric Rod Steiger which killed any interest the fraternity brothers had in the film. Fortunately, the Martians are none too smart and it takes them a long time to murder everyone. What losers!
There are tropes from a host of other Sy Fy movies, including the bulbous noggins of the Martians and the flying saucers over D.C. A few of the vignettes are amusing; most are not.
While the actors are uniformly good, they have very little to do. The script after all was derived from bubble gum trading cards. The characters betray their cardboard origins. Viewers will long for the depth of insight of a comic book.
Martin Short as the slime-ball press secretary is great. That Jack Nicholson is president seemed a welcome relief in 2018 since he gives the role gravitas. Pierce Brosnan never looked more sure of himself than when he was totally wrong time after time. Perfect. Annette Bening lit up the screen. As always, Jim Brown brought dignity to the Las Vegas Egyptian costume (which one dolt, a professional reviewer at that, said was Roman) and Pam Grier evidently thought it was a drama and gives a fine performance that should have been in another movie. ‘I’ts not unusual’ that a big chunk of $70 million budget must have gone to the performers. The writing is less than Ed Wood standard. Much less.
On the plus side no one thinks the response to the Martians’ assault should be prayer. Regrettably Whit Bissell is nowhere to be seen at a lab bench concocting a double whammy to lay those Martians low as he did in so many 1950s Sy Fy films. On the minus side it is a long list but it always comes back to one thing: the lack of a narrative. We don’t care about the characters because they are so cardboard, and the situation is repetitive, and the denouement is nice but much, much too long time in coming. Way too long.
There are many loose ends. The apocalyptic opening scene with the stampede of burning cattle is never resolved. It occurred long before the first Martian left Mars. It seems to have been forgotten by the director, along with much else.
We never do find out why the Martians came. Sure, just for fun, but why then? Why not in 2016 when we really needed a diversion.
Are Kansans really as deplorable as they appear to be in this movie?
We have a lot of camera time with the first daughter and then she is seen no more. Moreover, she would seem to be more like a grand-daughter to the geriatric president.
Did Jack Black have to be in this movie at all? (This is always a question worth asking.)
The Martians seem particularly to dislike birds. Why? We’ll never know but a point is made of establishing it.
What colour socks do the Martians wear? (One of those searingly insightful media questions.)
As to any and all of the above, who cares?
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