Review of The Martian (2015) by Jumpbrick — 31 Dec 2015

I've never found myself disagreeing with the popular opinion so greatly - but this mess of a movie was really quite bad.

To begin with this movie is tonally incoherent. I was unsure if it was trying to be a serious Sci-Fi movie or a comedy. It has a promising set-up of potentially being Cast Away in space but I never felt the drama of the situation. This is probably because the majority of the drama is being told - not shown and its done uninterestingly by Matt Damon. The cast would seem better fit for an SNL movie - but here the comedy is groan-worthy. Also - this movie has very odd product placement. At one point Matt Damon whips out a bottle of Heinz Ketchup circa 2015 with no explanation why they would leave him with no food but some how be able to have Heinz on board.

This movie was off the mark in almost every category but it's worst offence was taking an interesting premise and cheapening by having it described through needless narration. They either thought the demographic was too stupid to understand what was going on - or they wanted to save money by not filming the action.