Mars Attacks!
I liked it! Surprisingly enough, considering how it’s a somewhat famous movie, but the entire critics world seems to dislike the film for being not funny and too shallow. Certainly the film is shallow as it compresses way too many characters into one film, and none of them is developed. It also is not really funny in the same way every bad science-fiction movie in the world is not really funny. But, amazingly enough, I thought the movie was enjoyable. I didn’t think any of the action scenes was over-the-top (though I do think that they overused the shots in which the Martians’ heads explode) and certainly they could have .
I didn’t think the Martians were stupid, albeit they obviously seemed that way, but in fact they totally make sense. Apart from the fact that they were probably just intended to be bad guys, they are not entirely pointless and ‘stupid’ if we look at humanity itself. Humans are not too smart either and some, if not a lot, are prone to sadistic tendencies, especially when they consider their adversaries lower than themselves. The Martians – with their superior technology – are not acting much more dumb than any European colonialists for many centuries who had better firepower because a few smart ones developed the technology. They went to another place, pretty much randomly killed off other races after pretending to negotiate. The Martians’s behavior is not so far off from humans really.
But even if that doesn’t matter, I’d say that I just enjoyed seeing some of those actors’s faces, especially Jack Nicholson. Certainly some characters were completely superfluous (Art Land’s character was rather pointless indeed), but the president certainly had some deadpan faces reminiscent of “Dr. Strangelove”. The latter is also most obviously the better movie in almost every aspect – it especially wins for being an actually smart film – but as long as “Mars Attacks!” was fun, it’s perfectly enough for me.
Tim Burton is such a mixed bag. “Mars Attacks!” is part of those movies I’d say are not so bad, but also not mind-blowing. I used to love Tim Burton back in the day with “Corpse Bride” and “Ed Wood”, but now, after seeing the infuriating “Alice in Wonderland” while bitterly remembering the stupid “Big Fish”, I can only say that Tim Burton is probably the director I feel the most emotional about, but I certainly don’t call myself a fan anymore.