Mars Attacks!
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Tim Burton |
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| Distributor | Warner Home Video |
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| 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… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
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
Barnes and Noble
Tim Burton’s tribute to the alien invasion flicks of the ‘50s is so stubbornly zany that it’s hard not to like. Burton is a director with an undying penchant for glorifying the kooky, and in Mars Attacks! he constructs what is basically an epic Saturday morning cartoon—with more cartoonish violence than Tom or Jerry ever dreamed possible. Gibberish-speaking Martians with abnormally large heads arrive in big saucers and, without motive, bring on the destruction of Earth by vaporizing all of Congress (though, in true Burton spirit, one character’s first reaction is to laugh and almost cheer). The disparate cast includes every talent imaginable—from Pam Grier to Pierce Brosnan to Jack Nicholson in a double role as U.S. President and a gaudy casino developer—and each member plays the big joke so impeccably straight that one might ask whether Burton is lovingly honoring or outrageously mocking the genre. The answer is probably a little bit of both, but even if it isn’t, the outcome is irresistibly fun. Pete Segall
