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Director Tim Burton (Batman, Edward Scissorhands) turns an infamous 1960s line of trading cards into a mad-cap feature film with Mars Attacks! Patterned after star-laden disaster flicks from the ’70s, the film follows a large ensemble of characters in Washington DC, Las Vegas, and Kansas as flying saucers are discovered gathering around Earth. When the aliens send coordinates for a meeting, the military, press, and civilian onlookers gather to welcome them — an event that ends in tragedy as the Martians open fire and disintegrate nearly everyone in sight. The alien assault then widens across the globe with seemingly no way to stop it. Cast members die off in comedic fashion until one character finally discovers the Martians’ Achilles Heel.
Jack Nicholson gets top-billing in Mars Attacks!, playing two characters — one is the president of the United States, the other is a Vegas tycoon who thinks he can cash in on the Martian craze. Among the other actors with the most screen time is Martin Short as the White House press secretary, a horn-dog who inadvertently allows a Martian assassin disguised as a sultry woman (a mute but scene-stealing Lisa Marie) directly to the president’s bedside. Jim Brown plays a retired boxer slumming it as a Vegas casino worker. He spends the film trying to get to DC where his ex-wife (Pam Grier) and their two sons live. Annette Bening is cast as an overly-optimistic hippie, Rod Steiger plays the president’s kill-happy head general, and Pierce Brosnan plays a less-than reassuring scientific advisor. Sarah Jessica Parker gets one of the silliest roles, playing a woman on whom the Martians perform a head transplant — with her chihuahua.
Mars Attacks! is not one of Tim Burton’s finer films, but it contains a fair number of laughs and captures a few grand moments of mayhem and destruction. There are so many characters and irreverent subplots that we’re left without any central hero or narrative through-line to guide us. The script is under-developed and never quite finds the right tone or sense of verisimilitude. Viewers looking for any meaning beyond slim satire are likely to be disappointed. Mars Attacks! doesn’t have a serious bone in its body — it exists solely to be as weird as possible on the grandest scale Hollywood can deliver. Some may admire this film for its sheer audacity. Others will find it too unmoored, emotionally hollow, or self-indulgent. It’s the kind of film that only gets made when a highly successful director is finally given carte blanche to do whatever they want — for better or for worse.
The computer-generated aliens are often less-than effective. Burton originally wanted them to be stop-motion animated, which would have certainly added charm, but the technique was prohibitively expensive. Peter Suschitzky’s (The Empire Strikes Back, Krull) photography is colorful and Danny Elfman delivers a memorable march for the Martian meanies.
The largely under-utilized cast also includes Glenn Close, Danny DeVito, Michael J. Fox, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman, singer Tom Jones, Paul Winfield, Jack Black, Joe Don Baker, Christina Applegate, O-Lan Jones, and Sylvia Sidney in her final screen performance.