#59 Mars Attacks!

During production on Mars Attacks! director Tim Burton was told about another big budget alien invasion flick shooting over Hollywood way. It beat him to the summer and conquered the world. Trundling out in December, Burton's film looked like a niggardly piss-take and offended American audiences stayed away; a pity, because Burton's picture is better in every respect. It looks and sounds tremendous, and, more importantly, has garlanded about its over-developed exo-brain the real love of genre no one ever accused Independence Day's over-slick money machine of brandishing. Anyone with a passion for the classics (and the dreck) of this particular genus will find much to admire and feel smug about as Burton and scripter Jonathan Gems liberally quote from The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), War of the Worlds (1953), et al. And if it's not quite the all-knowing satirical masterpiece some would have us believe, it does at least have a real irony and cynicism (check-out the final Star Warsy medal presentation) that, if we look to conspiracy, can't have done much for its Stateside chances.
A plot, of sorts: gaggles of UFOs scarily surround the Earth. They promise to come in peace, but leave the huge desert welcoming committee (Paul Winfield and Michael J Fox included) in pieces. They apologise and ask to address Congress. They vaporise it. President Dale (Jack Nicholson) retreats to his Strangeloveian War Bunker, watching helplessly as little green men lay waste to the globe. And Las Vegas, where real estatist Art Land (Nicholson again) schemes, ex-boxer Jim Brown stalks about dressed as an Egyptian, Annette Benning comes over all hippy-dippy, and Tom Jones - camp on a stick - plays himself.
Mars Attacks! has the best title sequence - massed squadrons of Martian saucers spinning across space - since, well, Tim Burton's last film. And a nod is more than due ILM for their magnificent FX work throughout, whether it be those not-quite-so-new UFOs with their clawing legs and tongue-ish ramps, or the endearingly ugly anti-ET's themselves as they "Ack-Ack!" their way across screen blasting seven shades of crap out of anything they see. The effects brilliantly maintain the delicate balance between the comic and the grotesque, something perhaps best exemplified by the herd of flaming cattle stampeding through the prologue, or by the ray-guns broiling their victims down to Day-Glo skeletons. True to the original Topps trading cards that inspired him, at times Burton cannot help being just plain nasty. Certain sequences - Lucas Haas' pick-up chased by a gigantic Martian robot; a saucer carefully nudging a Washington monument to squash a Boy Scout troop; President Dale's inevitable death scene - should by rights have audiences on their feet for the sheer bravado they offer. And scorer Danny Elfman returns after his Ed Wood hiatus for arguably the finest collaboration with Burton yet - everything-and-the-kitchen-sink, the picture bathed in massed choirs and spooky Theremin at the drop of a cymbal. At its best it comes on like a cross between Howard Shore's wonderful Ed Wood work and the camper extremes of The Wizard of Oz.
What's lacking is any sense of humanity - it is noticeably Burton's first film without an eponymous lead. And while that's not quite the problem here that it is in Independence Day - this is after all an intentional comedy - it does rather have that fatal Disaster Movie flaw of racking-up a stellar cast just to knock them down. We don't care, even in a cartoon way, what happens to anyone here, so that even the film's one attempt at pathos - Jim Brown's family - betrays no real feeling. And it sometimes lacks focus, flitting between Washington and Las Vegas and outer space to no discernible purpose. Burton can make us feel, as demonstrated by his masterpiece Edward Scissorhands, so here we have to conclude he's simply bothering.

It's difficult to single out anyone from such a huge cast for praise, but one would have to say that Jack Nicholson, although wasted as the gauche Land, is terrific as the world-weary Dale, greeting the Martian leader in the words of Rodney King: "Why can't we all just get along?" Pierce Brosnan is affably buttoned-down as the not-so-sharp government scientist, victorious white trash Haas is likeable, and Sylvia Sidney memorable as a batty Slim Whitman devotee.

When all is said and done, Warners giving Burton $70 million to make Mars Attacks! with seems extremely foolhardy. (Did they even read the script?) It's too devoted to its antecedents to garner a mass audience (but it's not, as some have lazily ventured, the best Ed Wood movie Wood never made), too mainstream to gather a genuine cult. This is arguably the biggest Art 'B' Movie ever made, although one that just now and again - that title sequence; the aliens' surgery; and a frankly gobsmacking final shot - will really take your breath away...