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Overall Rating
  Awesome: 2.73%
Worth A Look: 10.91%
Just Average: 21.82%
Pretty Crappy: 40.91%
Sucks: 23.64%
11 reviews, 44 user ratings
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| Red Planet |
by WilliamPrice
"Bring oxygen if you want to remain conscious to the end."
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This would-be sci-fi opus seems as if it was written by a reluctant schoolboy for the sole purpose of passing his 9th grade writing class. Contrived plot devices and faulty characterizations abound, but the real problem is the creator’s complete lack of genuine interest or involvement in his work. How does this kind of crap get made into a movie? What mindless, noxious force choose to animate this corpse of an idea, driving before it a host of actors, artists and technicians like so much cattle, and leaving in its wake the legions of hapless moviegoers who, not only deprived of their precious time and money, have been made spiritually poorer by exposure to this pointless veneration of tedious ennui?The basic plot elements of Red Planet are ripped off from the Russian epic Planetaburg (1962), with Mars substituted for Venus. The female crew-member remains in orbit while the fellas go planet side and deal with getting lost and a robot gone haywire, while spouting philosophy. In Red Planet, the stakes are upped by having the fate of Earth rely on their ability to find out what went wrong with the terra-forming operation on Mars. It also takes a more in grim approach along the lines of croaking off most of its main characters.
The movie begins with a lame duck voice-over, and we know immediately that we are in trouble. The visual design flip-flops randomly between Alien rip-off and 2001 rip-off as we are introduced to a mumbling cast of non-entities meant to pass for the ship’s crew. Supposedly they have been in space together for the last 100-plus days, but they seem like indifferent college students trapped together in study hall for the last 5-plus minutes. The actor’s level of involvement in their craft is nil; their character’s level of involvement in their situation is nil; the direction is intolerably lax and our beloved writer, the sultan of superficiality, is presumably off by the pool having a frosty.
No such luck for us. After a vacuous philosophical argument and a brief nudie shower scene, it’s off to land Mars. Oh, of course a mean old solar flare hits the mother ship just about then, so stranded Carrie-Anne Moss will have something to do. Natch, she pulls a Ripley, arguing with the female computer and flick-flick-flicking buttons on the ceiling in her teasey cotton tee.
Planet side, the boys crash land and start a-fighting and a-dieing without ever raising their voices above a mumble. Don’t forget the CGI critter AMEE (Autonomous Mapping Exploration and Evasion), who’s sanity quickly evades him. Besides which our heroes are running out of oxygen. And the relief station has been destroyed. Not good.
Getting out of this mess, and into new, more absurd fixes, will take some preposterous plot twists; luckily there’s no shortage there. You can bet that the believe-o-meter hits zero long before the credits roll on this turkey.
To be sure, there are some decent effects. Australian terrain shot with a filter makes for a cool Mars. The CGI effects (the outer-space scenes and AMEE) are detailed and engaging. The trouble is they don’t provoke an emotional response or blend into a coherent whole. No atmosphere is created because there is no atmosphere to create.In the end, it’s not the effects, the plot holes or the slum acting that make this film suck; nor is it the cheesy, techno-wimp score. It’s because the whole damn thing is more lifeless than the planet Mars itself. It has no spark, no passion, no reason to exist. In case you’re wondering, I’m not recommending it.
link directly to this review at https://www.hollywoodbitchslap.com/review.php?movie=4304&reviewer=407
originally posted: 08/23/05 19:44:25
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USA
10-Nov-2000 (PG-13)
DVD: 27-Mar-2001
UK
N/A
Australia
07-Dec-2000 (M)
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