Review of Mars Attacks! (1996) by Daniel C — 20 Apr 2016

Martians attack Earth with superior weapons and a twisted sense of humour.

I'll start by saying I thought this movie was terrible when it first came out.

I figured I might've been too young to understand and so, gave it another try 20 years later and my opinion remains.

I had no idea it had such a star studded cast, or that Tim Burton was involved though. Oh dear...

I get that this is probably meant to be a parody and some sort of tribute to old 1950's sci-fi movies but this feels like it's something else entirely. While there is opportunity for humour in here and some of the nods are obvious, most of the jokes fall flat, or get repeated too often. Maybe that's also part of the point? I dunno.

Mars Attacks! just feels too painful to watch through in the end. 20 years on the acting is stiff, the effects are cheap and there's much better parodies or alien invasion movies out there. Thankfully there are also much better Tim Burton films too!