Review of Red Planet (2000) by Kenneth L — 20 May 2011

Please! BE good to mother earth or you may have to rely on these guys to try and figure out how to make Mars human habitable for us in the mid century future. Of course we're too stupid & greedy to figure out how stop killing our viability here so we get the bright idea to start all over from scratch with the next one out.

Billiant humanity - lots a luck with that one. Whats the first thing they do to creat a welcoming environment that we can all feel compliments our idea of optimum effeciency & convinience most perfectly? Of course! We nuke it.

To greenhouse liberate all that locked up subterraenian CO2. Then, when its warm enough, just add algae. And. Viola! You got a brand new planet to dispoil. Why do I get this haunting suspicion that its a little bit more complicated than that, Dr.

Zarkov? If it was all that easy then why not the same quick fix type formulae for human habitabily on earth? They leave that heady question to your imagination to discover. But, you better hurry 'cause we've got just 40 years now.

We're all counting on you to figger this out now...still counting...Well? Now back to their solution (heaven help us all)...It mysteriously fails and they send up the Right Stuff that acts more like the Breakfast Club Lost In Space to save the day.

Setting the mood and familiarizing the characters with the obligatory walkin on the Cmdr Bowey ( Carry Ann Moss ) stepping out of the shower by her budding interest, Systems Engineer Gallegher ( Val Kilmer ), then all joining in a binge of Bio-science Mission Specialist Berchenal's ( Tom Sizemore ) Lab stilled moonshine with the rest of the human crew; Lt.

Statton ( Benjamine Bratt ), terraformer Tadingale ( Simon Baker ), geophysicist Chartillos ( Terrance Stamp ). Those 6 (7 with the robot). That's all you get on the screen for this whole thing. Then, one by one, all but Bowey & Gallegher get killed off any way.

Then, the superstar of the movie and Gallegher's little sweety-pet AMEE ( Advance Mapping Environmental Explorer ) gets introduced by him mischeiviously switching its regular navigation mode over to 'military' & scarring the shit out of Tadingale.

Human & robot relations deteriorate from there. They reach Mars just in time to suffer through and barely escape from the first of a long string of mishaps: solar flare or gamma burst or "proton field upset" or oxygen flashflare reaction splatter or whatever (you choose) = orbiter crippling = emegency crash landing = Amee stuck in military mode = 7hrs of oxygen = a guy with a boken leg left to die alone = finding habitat salvation just in time = dying of oxygen depletion anyway = not = not freezing by burning their habitat = finding lost Amee = wishing not = finding Sojurner's radio = just missing abandonment = not = unless Cosmos can save them = not completely = algae eating bugs: good = human eating bugs: bad = the most ingenious use of exess fuel I'll ever see in a movie = pop rocks from Mars = Bowey abanoning = then rescuing = then abandoning = then rescuing = ad infinitum = happily ever after.

Dahda! And oh yea, make sure you get the little buggers back to earth so you can turn them into humanity's little helpers without eating us all up. But, that's the sequel that will never happen.

So there, now are you satisfied for letting this movie die? I thought the acting was quite adequet for what was on hand. I even thought the story hung together as best as could be managed around the missing plot explainations.

Amee looked real enough for me for her to carry her role. I thought the scenery, costumes, cinematography, and fx were plenty convincing enough for my purposes. This DID NOT look like a grade B movie at all to me ( for 2000 anyway ) .

Some of the character development, emotion motivation, uninvolving dialog, flash-backs, reminiscing, personality conflict, interpersonal tension etc. seemed a little underacted or even dynamically missing enough to leave me with a big empty huh? The whole thing didn't seem to stand up too well to the script supervisor or any of the post production.

Still, all in all, I felt carried along enough by the action and sufficiently perked by some of its considerations as to care about its outcome. They could of tried harder. But, what the hell. They tried hard enough to make me like it anyway.