Um- A Review of "Mars Attacks!" directed by Tim Burton

For the most part, someone can spot a film such as Edward Scissorhands or the new Alice in Wonderland and say "Oh yeah, that's definitely a Tim Burton film". However, when it comes to "Mars Attacks!", one might not even realize they're watching a film directed by Tim Burton until after the movie. I picked this movie simply because i knew everyone else would choose Mr. Scissorhands, the 8 year old on LSD, a planet where evolution never continued, and most of all, scary dreams before the fat man comes to leave his presents. Not knowing anything about the film except that 1) Tim Burton directed it and 2) it's about an Alien invasion, I expected a dark, slightly provocative, sometimes witty film as one might be right to expect out of a Tim Burton film (also Johnny Depp). Instead, i was in for quite a surprise. The film is much more of a comedy in the realms of Airplane. With many major faces making appearances (Pierce Brosnan, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Tom Jones (as himself), Jim Brown, Natalie Portman, and Pam Grier... with no Depp in sight). The movie is essentially a narration on how different people react to an alien invasion, showing the president's attempts at negotiations, a hillbilly's fight, a hippie's plight for peace, a general's thirst for war, a scientist's quest for knowledge, and everyone else's search for survival.

The film is a fairly entertaining, rather brainless, comedy which fails at providing many big laughs. There are plenty of giggle moments when it comes to the human failure at translation, the alien's experiments with humans, and a cross-dressed assassin, however, there were never times when i found myself laughing too hard to breathe. Many of the characters are over exaggerated so much that they are no longer funny, but rather annoying. There are few bearable characters, yet the movie does show how a refusal to compromise and adapt becomes the death of a character, so these reasonable characters were clearly set up to be the image of this lesson.

All in all, the movie is a good mindless comedy worth watching if one was to see it in a $1 movie bin, but it's nothing to marvel at, or even take any references from.

I give "Mars Attacks!" 2.5 yodels out of 5