Mars Attacks! (1996)
Nice planet. We’ll take it!
Still playing that Aliens game, so found another nonsensical movie for the night that doesn’t really fit but at least this time it actually has aliens in it. Leave the horror behind, tonight we slap on the camp. Let’s be real, most people are gonna enjoy a comedy more than an action flick anyways right? Well, maybe tonight’s little would-be campy sci-fi homage won’t tickle everyone’s fancy, but either way we’ll see what kind of crazy gets about when Mars Attacks!
Our story here is probably the least important part of the movie - it’s a just a means for antics. Sure, that doesn’t mean that it can’t be good - but it sure doesn’t really feel like it was that important a thing, in part due to the vast number of characters and places you’ll be jumping around. This isn’t to say there isn’t some decent threads going on in there that aren’t one hundred percent comedy - the ex-boxer and donut worker for instance have very wholesome front-stories where they just want to get their family together and safe after things hit the fan - but most of the other ones are just sort of happenstance or being there because of their role - such as the reporters or president. The main gist of things is that Mars has aliens, they surround Earth, Humans are incredibly dense in the head, Martians attack as the title states.
Now, if there’s an actor that was popular at the time you’ll most likely find them in this movie. Do they all have more than just a cameo appearance? No. Sometimes you’ll even get the same one in two different roles. For the most part - and this is based on the premise of the movie’s a quirky comedy movie in intent - the actors do a good job. There’s a layer of cheese, some goofy, and the occasional straight-laced deliveries out of everyone involved. Sometimes this will help with the comedy side of things, but it might be a bit subjective given the nature of comedy. The martians are surprisingly emotive at times, considering their entire audio track is quacking if you go off of the subtitles.
As I just mentioned, comedy is always subjective so what one finds funny might not be a hit for others. Here, you get a wide range of joke types, but it’s almost guaranteed that there’s going to be misses for some. Sure, everyone can laugh at good timing, but not everyone will get the reference to crappy music and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! Likewise, some of the visual gags haven’t aged nearly as well as the common joke - they aren’t horrible looking, but it’s not exactly something you’ll find convincing enough that you feel like you are laughing more at the joke then you are the effect. Still, there’s a good amount of jokes in there, and even if some could offend a person it wouldn’t surprise me that the same person would find something else in it to laugh about. For me personally, it wasn’t a roll-on-the-floor experience, but it was still enjoyable enough.
Welcome to Earth!
While we are mentioning the visual effects, i’d say most of them are pretty fine. Like i mentioned in the comedy part, some of them don’t hold up as well. They are normally at their finest when it’s something that’s full effects work - like the aliens inside their own spaceship. The most comical effect is during the opening ceremony attack, in which every wide shot didn’t bother to render in any alien attackers. I’m sure they didn’t think someone would be noticing that 15 years later, but as luck would have it I did. Other moments are more inbetween - such as the torn alien disguise where it can look good at times but then lacks any animation or movement or anything to really pop it out as a super well done effect. The more practical stuff all looks pretty well done, with plenty of explosions, colored prop skeletons, car flips, and a tumble or two.
Costumes can stand out just as much as the effects work, although I feel like I’m cheating talking about the martian outfits when the martians aren’t costumes themselves. On the human side, we get plenty of flavor brought about by the wide range of areas and roles of the characters. The casino brings all sorts of Pharaoh-themed attire with plenty of gold, the military side of things looks adequate to be convincing on both the attire and their general gear, and we get the more normal-folks bringing up the worker, trailer, and white house outfits to round it out. Even the martians rock some pretty glam-rock outfits, with their bright red underpants and their economical suits being overshadowed by the extravagant capes of the leaders.
Audio is well balanced, as things tend to be. It’s good that you can hear everyone talking, given some fo the jokes are more audio-based. Line deliveries are well done, even if the lines they are delivering might be somewhat dumb. Music does it’s job of standing out as an Elfman scoring, much like some of the characters feel like a typical Burton character, but still fitting within the movie instead of just replacing it. There’s also a few hits mixed in there - and the one homage song to the other Attack I’ve previously mentioned. It sounds pretty good, no complaints in regards to that - although I’m sure some people might find the martians aggressive quacking to be a bit run down by the end of the movie - although personally I might just start imitating the martians next time I have nothing to add to a conversation that I can’t escape.
Incognito.
If you are in the right mood, you’ll probably have fun here. If you have some nostalgia for it, that’ll probably only do you good. If you don’t have the nostalgia for the time or the genre or the movie specifically, then you can still have fun but you might not enjoy it quite as much as those who do. If you want something you can throw on in the background without needing to turn your brain on, it works wonders - or if you just like trying to see all the actors that you can spot and recognize. Yeah, there’s some pretty heavy stuff in there if you look hard at it even though the movie plays it all up for laughs, but if I’m being honest how stupid the human race is might hit folks a bit harder these days then when the movie came out.