Mars Attacks! (1996)

It's enlightening to view Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! as his twisted satire of the blockbuster film Independence Day, which was released earlier the same year, although the movies were in production simultaneously. Burton's eye-popping, schlock tribute to 1950s UFO movies actually plays better on video than it did in theaters. The idea of invading aliens ray gunning the big-name movie stars in the cast is a cleverly subversive one, and the bulb-headed, funny-sounding animated Martians are pretty nifty, but it all seemed to be spread thin on the big screen. On video, however, the movie's kooky humor seems a bit more concentrated. The Earth actors (most of whom get zapped or kidnapped for alien science experiments) include Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rod Steiger, Michael J. Fox, Lukas Haas, Jim Brown, Tom Jones, and Pam Grier. The digital video disc features an isolated track for Danny Elfman's score, as well as a few other clever and nasty little Martian surprises. --Jim Emerson Amazon.com

 Sweet!
This film makes me laugh to no end. It is yet another example of Tim Butron's phenominal and unprecidented imagination. This film clearly exemplifies the respect professionals have for Tim Burton when the likes of Jack Nicholson and Sarah Jessica Parker are willing to be disintegrated and disembodied in order to bring his story to life. April 29, 2008

 Only Tim Burton
I have always loved Tim Burton films. Even as a child, before I ever new a name of any director out there, I did know Burton. Also Unlike any film maker out there, I have seen seven of the fourteen feature films that he has made, when they were in the theatre (including " The Nightmare Before Christmas"). Wondering if his films will captivate me as they did when I was younger, I thought that I will begin to rewatch these films which I have not seen in many years and write reviews as I view them from the perspective of someone older.

Well, starting out of order with "Mars Attacks!", I am not disappointed. This film is as fun as I remembered it, but this time around it was even more fun because I understood those hidden jokes and gags that as a child I never would have known had hidden meanings. In Burton's A-movie wanting to be a B-movie I was also surprised by the ensemble cast. While Nicholson and Brosnan I remembered, I was surprised to see Jack Black, Martin Short, Natalie Portman and even Jim Brown!!

I enjoyed the fact that: (The Slightest of Spoilers)

The aliens are deliriously cold-as-ice evil.
Skeletons zapped by the aliens guns stay fluorescent green or red.
Jack Black is a like a jock.
The woman with the slit in her throat from Beetlejuice, Sylvia Sidney was in it (who incidentally in real life died of throat cancer).
The movie opens to a herd of running cows on fire.

April 6, 2008

 Classic Tim Burton
Anyone who sees this movie at first will think it is stupid. However, if you watch it again, the small snide jokes come out and the aliens actually kill congress. They also kill the president. Sarah Jessica Parker and Pierce Brosnan lose their body. Jack Nicholson is killed twice. The whole movie is awesome. March 30, 2008

 Pop culture meets its match...
One reviewer notes the frustration this movie created: "This sends we the viewer into an intellectual quandry.We start looking for the 'hook' or the 'bridge' in the plot."

Potential viewers who find themselves looking for anything profoundly intellectual in Mars Attacks! should immediately reseal the package and seek whatever financial remuneration is most readily available from the purchase or rental. If you are looking for anything other than an opportunity for 1) a goodly number of righteously earned laughs, 2) visual insanity, 3) jabs at the simplistic and short-sighted approaches our society uses to solve it's problems, and 4) well-buttered, full-of-cholesterol, artery clogging popcorn, then save yourself the pain and read some Tolstoy. There's nothing here for you.

On the other hand, if you are up for absurd fun, visual imagination on parade, a laundry list of stars willing to offer up themselves and pop-culture to the ray-guns of balloon-headed aliens, then you are in for a treat.

On a final note, perhaps the movie, after all, does offer some intellectual insight: Ultimately its the most simple - and human - traits that serve to protect us. March 23, 2008

 With Tim Burton, how can you lose?
Granted it's not his best effort, but it IS funny, especially when the often biting satire hits the viewer. Burton not only mocks most space movies but much of our world and culture, and does so effectively. I can see why "Mars Attacks!" has become a cult classic. March 3, 2008

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