When he was asked a few weeks ago to describe his new movie, Mission To Mars, actor Gary Sinise replied, "It's about a mission. To Mars." Bit of an overstatement.
If you have seen the trailers for this movie, you have already seen all the good bits. Mission To Mars is one of those films that looks as if something bad happened in the editing room. Alien abduction, maybe? Just a guess.
Mission To Mars begins with a celebration here on Earth, a send-off party for the astronauts who are about to spend six months in transit before they arrive at the red planet.
There's a lot of emotional hooey about left-behind wives and children, no doubt to make a viewer care about those astronauts who will no doubt soon be dead, though it's how they will be dead which is actually of interest.
The philosophical nattering continues with a consideration of who gets to go to Mars and who does not -- and Astronaut Jim (Gary Sinise) does not, because his wife died and he couldn't cope. Never mind that the movie is set in the near future, where medical knowledge of any genetic predisposition to this or that disease would have prevented his wife from ever having been accepted in the astronaut program in the first place.
Stupid science is the least of this picture's problems.
Anyway, the first set of space travellers runs into trouble. A rescue mission goes out, and this time, Gary Sinise gets to go. Unlike the filmmakers, he has failed to notice that the planet he's in such a rush to visit is the same colour as Cheeze Whiz(TM).
After plenty of no-gravity floating around and a couple of special effects, they get to Mars. Alas, by now they've lost the ship as well as the narrative, but never mind.
The earthlings have a second chance to bond with their alien hosts, who have previously shown a tendency to eviscerate the human visitors. They discover something wondrous!
(Hint: The astronauts discover that all space movie cliches, including the large-eyed-children-painted-on-black-velvet alien visage, originated on Mars.)
It is impossible not to sympathize with the cast, some of whom spend the entire movie talking flat like real astronauts do, and worse yet, from behind a glass mask, and worst of all while wearing Spice Girls boots.
It's a tough job to work with such superb actors as Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise and Don Cheadle and still wind up with a lousy movie, but Brian De Palma was up to the challenge.
Mission To Mars is an odd adventure story/relationship thingy/spiritual quest -- the same formula that didn't quite work in The Abyss and certainly doesn't work here.
(This film is rated PG)
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