# Mission to Mars (2000)

### reviewed by
Paul-Michael Agapow

    Mission to Mars

A Postview, copyright 2000 by Paul-Michael Agapow.

    "Mission to Mars"
    Released 2000.
    Directed by Brian De Palma.
    Starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle and (very
    briefly) Kim Delaney.

A heroic crew struggles to rescue a team of astronauts stranded on Mars, stopping only for product placement and triumphant fanfares.

It has become traditional with every new Brian De Palma film to tut-tut about how it's not up to his usual standard. Which brings to mind the question: Exactly what is De Palma's usual standard? "Snake Eyes"? "Bonfire of the Vanities"? Now to build on this history of failed expectations comes Mission to Mars, a Steinbeckian idiot of a film that smothers any sense in the script with its desperate clammy grip.

The setup is this: the year is 2020 and Earth is going to Mars. Of course, when I say "Earth" I mean "America", just like when the film says "international effort", they mean "NASA". Now, Ray Bradbury wrote about the small-town America going to Mars, with colonists building homesteads and sitting on their front porches sipping lemonade. In contrast, "Mission to Mars" has a bunch of smug, laddish, middle-class baby boomers going to Mars. (I say "baby boomers" but the characters are of course 30 years too young for the way they dress, talk and the music they listen to. I say "laddish" but there are three female characters: one whose main function is to fret, one that dies twenty minutes into the film and another who dies before the film even starts.) What we have here is "2001" as done by Ron Howard. Note: this is not a compliment.

But anyway, Earth is going to Mars. Unfortunately (for the audience) the first expedition is composed of Z-list actors and is thus doomed to be wiped out by a mysterious alien artefact. (Don't you hate it when that happens?) So a rescue mission is mounted DR PEPPER and is entering Martian KAWASAKI orbit when disaster PENZOIL strikes and their M&MS ship is BUDWEISER struck by SONY meteorites. BUY MORE STUFF. "Put on your helmet or you'll embolize!", worries the femme-astronaut. At first I thought it was a warning to the audience, but it turns out the ship is in danger and mission commander Tim Robbins is making his big bid to escape the script. (The plucky little guy looked kinda peaceful at the end, a happy little smile on his face as he froze to death.) The chick panics for a while, they make a crash-landing on Mars and find the lone survivor. ("Hey, we're the rescue team! Uh, you wouldn't have a spare spaceship lying around would you?")

As bogus as the first part of the film is, it at least shows some grip of orbit al mechanics and physics. By contrast, the biology appears to have been lifted from "Pokemon". You see, the aliens have left a secret message for humans, a message that may only be decoded by someone who has seen "Contact". The message turns out to be a DNA sequence that is "missing a chromosome". (Two possibilities: 1. No-one on the team knows anything about biology, or 2. The astronauts' confusion over basic molecular biology is due to NASA's affirmative action policy on hiring the chromosomally challenged.) The astronautrix panics for a while, then concludes that if they fill in the "missing chromosome", the mysterious alien artefact will usher the astronauts into a really cool planetarium. This happens. (Although surely it would have been a lot simpler and cheaper for NASA to just send the guys to the Field Museum for the afternoon.)

The basic goofiness of "Mission to Mars" is compounded by lugheaded dialogue and direction, with characters explaining what they have just done or are just about to do, and computers helpfully announcing "AT POINT OF NO RETURN" or "AIR LEVELS FALLING TO 30 PERCENT". Note please this is a film that has three names credited for the "story" and three more for the "screenplay". This smacks of writers who did all their research by watching other movies - "Contact", "The Abyss", "Apollo 13", "Close Encounters", "2001", "Silent Running" - while watching the Discovery Channel for flavour. Add in the strident soundtrack and gobs of pseudoscience and you have a very unhappy audience.

I'd describe "Mission to Mars" as dull, dumb and shitheaded but that would be insulting other dull, dumb and shitheaded films. It's not even stupid enough to be fun. It makes one yearn for the intellectual thrust and parry of Starship Troopers. [*/misfire] and that long empty stretch of road north of Port Augusta on the Sid & Nancy scale.

    --
    Paul-Michael Agapow (pm@postviews.freeuk.com)

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