 Tagline: Nice planet you got here. We'll take it! Awake, Earthlings! It's later than you think. Don't miss this hilarious frenzy as Tim Burton (Batman, Beetlejuice) directs - and Mars Attacks! See! Stars that shine across the galaxy. Jack Nicholson (in a dual role), Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito and a dozen more! Shriek! At mean, green invaders from the angry red planet! Armed with insta-fry ray guns, endowed with slimy, humongous brains - and enlivened with out-of-this-world but state-of-the-art special effects. Gasp! As the U.S. legislature is overwhelmed. (Don't fear, we still have 2 out of 3 branches of the government working for us, and that ain't bad!) Thrill! As Earth fights back with an unexpected weapon. Take that, Martians! Storyline: It is a normal day for everyone, until the President of the United States announces Martians have been spotted circling Earth. The Martians land and a meeting is arranged, but not everything goes to plan, and the Martians seem to have other plans for Earth. Are they just misunderstood beings or do they really want to destroy all of humanity? Written by Film_Fan Editor's Note: Tim Burton. Eccentric genius or colorful mad hatter? Every time I decide, every time I claw my way out of his head, he pulls me back in. When his quirky, candy-coated imagination and macabre sensibilities align -- Beetlejuice, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Big Fish, and Sweeney Todd leap to mind -- his films emerge as infectious works of art. When the two collide -- Batman Returns, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, most recently, Alice in Wonderland -- the ensuing misfires are gaudy, shallow, surprisingly bland blends of lofty concepts and seemingly uninspired execution. For me, Mars Attacks! lies somewhere in between. Based on the controversial 1962 Topps trading card series of the same name, his garish sci-fi comedy confused audiences and confounded critics. Was it a parody? Satire? B-movie homage? Dark comedy? Self-indulgent whim? All of the above? No one knew; least of all me, a seventeen-year-old fledgling film buff who walked away from his hometown cineplex cursing Burton's name. But that was 1996. Fourteen years later, I decided to give Mars Attacks! a second chance. And this time, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I don't want to get ahead of myself though. Mars Attacks! is often an exercise in style over substance, and Burton seems distracted by everything from his A-list ensemble to his multi-million-dollar ILM special effects. The story, if it can be called that, is painfully simple: invaders from Mars attack, Americans from all walks of life panic, and cheesy, tongue-in-cheek hilarity ensues. The devil isn't in the details, he's in the characters, many of whom die untimely but amusing deaths at the hands of Burton's vicious martians. Jack Nicholson grins and gawks as the President of the United States and leers and sneers as a sleazy, Las Vegas real estate mogul eager to make a quick buck from the country's newest residents. Glenn Close steps into the high heels of his snotty First Lady, Natalie Portman is his droll daughter, Martin Short plays the White House's skirt-chasing press secretary, Rod Steiger raises hell as the President's bloodthirsty General, Paul Winfield is the Colin Powell-esque military man tasked with welcoming the martians, and Pierce Brosnan plays the presidential advisor and stuffy professor determined to prove the invaders are merely misunderstood. Not enough Hollywood elites and familiar character actors for you? Mars Attacks! also features Sarah Jessica Parker as a flighty talk show host, Michael J. Fox as her news anchor beau, Annette Benning as a New Age flake, Danny DeVito as a smarmy Vegas lawyer, Jim Brown as a boxer-turned-casino worker, Luke Haas as a sweet-natured country boy, Pam Grier as a Washington D.C. bus driver and single mom, Lisa Marie as a martian infiltration unit, and entertainer Tom Jones as... well, entertainer Tom Jones. More, you ask? Indeed. Jack Black, Christina Applegate, the late Sylvia Sydney, and countless others ham it up for Burton's cameras. If Mars Attacks! was released even a year after Independence Day, I would applaud Burton's use of a ridiculously overstuffed, go-big-or-go-home cast, not to mention his endless supply of deadend, deadbeat subplots. Sadly, the countless similarities between the two films isn't the product of razor-sharp parody, but rather complete coincidence. Burton stretches himself and his story so thin that it's as if he took Jonathan Gems' screenplay, yelled action, shot whatever wide-eyed lunacy his actors came up with on the spot, and handed his dailies off to ILM to see what they could do with it all. Improvisation and haphazard special effects dominate the film, and the end result is as sporadic and scatterbrained as you might expect. There's method to Burton's madness, sure -- method that will be more clear to those weened on '50s sci-fi schlock -- but his blunt-force-trauma humor, face-value satire and quick-sand plotting is too wild and unwieldy to elicit much untempered praise. And yet the exclamation point in Mars Attacks! all but redeems his missteps. Burton and his ILM legions sink their teeth into every pulpy, twopenny gimmick at their disposal, celebrating science fiction's gummiest, tackiest conventions with the utmost confidence. Burton hurls wobbly flying saucers, rainbow-colored skeletons, crazy costumes, dim-witted dialogue, mish-mashed production design, slapstick pratfalls and a patchy parade of sight gags at the screen with giddy abandon. You can almost hear him cackling behind the camera; almost see his toothy smile widening and his mad-scientist mop blowing in the Las Vegas breeze. Laughs abound, at least for those who allow Burton's chintzy charms to work their magic. Spotty, unstable scripting and extraneous storylines be damned; Nicholson and his supporting cast are hilarious, giving their all in service of Burton's increasingly ludicrous whims. By the time Brosnan, reduced to a decapitated head, reunites with Parker, her own head stapled to a chihuahua's body, I couldn't stop chuckling. Watching Short wine and dine the martians' stiff-limbed, porcelain-skinned Trojan Horse nearly left me in tears. As Steiger drew his pistols to protect Nicholson's disheveled president, I could barely contain my sudden enthusiasm for Burton's overwrought, overreaching spoof. In fact, each and every time one of the characters met their gory fates -- be it by way of a laser, UFO cannon, cruel practical joke, disintegration beam, gigantic boot or ceremonial flag -- I felt a surge of sick-n-sinister approval. In the end, Mars Attacks! isn't smart enough to be a great satire, dark enough to be a biting black comedy, sharp enough to be an unforgettable parody, or extensive enough to be a sweeping homage. But as a grotesque and outrageous genre gumbo, it's endearing, funny and memorable, and offers more than enough B-movie kicks and A-list inanity to make it worth watching. At the very least, it deserves a second chance. (Based on Comic Book) Cast Notes: Jack Nicholson (President James Dale / Art Land), Glenn Close (First Lady Marsha Dale), Annette Bening (Barbara Land), Pierce Brosnan (Professor Donald Kessler), Danny DeVito (Rude Gambler), Martin Short (Press Secretary Jerry Ross), Sarah Jessica Parker (Nathalie Lake), Michael J. Fox (Jason Stone), Rod Steiger (General Decker), Tom Jones (Himself), Jim Brown (Byron Williams), Lukas Haas (Richie Norris), Natalie Portman (Taffy Dale), Pam Grier (Louise Williams), Lisa Marie (Martian Girl). IMDb Rating (01/07/13): 6.3/10 from 114,024 users
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