Bad outweighs good
Summer Grindle of La Crescenta is a sophomore at Los Angeles County
High School for the Arts.
The newest in a handful of Murphy's Law space movies, "Red Planet" is
so far the most palatable, but that isn't saying much. This particular
space spectacle begins with a casual, and useless, narrative, but soon
becomes passively entertaining, with Val Kilmer, music by Sting and a few
well-written lines. But the bad far outweighs the good.
The astronaut jargon strewn throughout is ridiculous, as are the
sometimes gruesome deaths of obligatory characters. The special effects
are interesting, but borrowed. "Red Planet" is a scrapbook of 20th
century sci-fi flicks.
No story, wasted cast
Matt Verboys of Burbank is a researcher for a television company.
It's easy to forgive a dumb, big-budget sci-fi flick if it's at least
entertaining. Unfortunately, "Red Planet" is as unbearably boring as it
is stupendously stupid. First-time director Antony Hoffman delivers
pretty pictures, but little in the way of suspense or coherent
storytelling.
If the characters are stranded on Mars (which looks an awful lot like
Arizona), then the helpless actors are stranded by Chuck Pfarrer's empty,
patched-together screenplay -- an impressive script in that it manages to
be worse than the ones he wrote for "Virus" and "Barb Wire." Of the
talented but thoroughly wasted cast, only Carrie-Anne Moss (of "The
Matrix" fame) manages to jump-start her limp role.
Along with the underwhelming "Mission to Mars," this effects-laden
turkey makes two failed missions to the red planet in one year. Guess
we're lucky Hollywood doesn't run NASA.
