Matt Damon plays an astronaut stuck on Mars in director Ridley Scott’s “The Martian”. But unlike another recent space saga – 2013’s Oscar-winning “Gravity” – “The Martian” doesn’t have enough dramatic pull to last its entire 2 hours and 20 minutes.
This “Martian” is not named Marvin, but rather Mark. On the 18th day of their Ares III exploration of the red planet, Mark Watney and the five other astronauts get caught outside in a severe storm. A giant piece of debris flies into Watney, sending him flying-off into the darkness. The other crew members, led by mission commander Lewis (played by Jessica Chastain), can’t locate Mark and presume he’s dead. And they must abort their mission and quickly leave the planet to save themselves.
But – guess what? Watney wakes-up the next morning and realizes two things: he’s the only person left on Mars and he’s probably going to die. However, he’s not going down without a fight. Staying positive, he comes-up with plans to grow food, because, as he says while holding an instruction manual to the video camera for a log entry: “Luckily – I’m a botanist!” This is one of at least a dozen notable corny one-liners delivered throughout what should be a very serious film.
Once NASA chief Teddy Sanders (played by Jeff Daniels), a character you’ll hate if you’re always the last person to learn about something important, marketing chief Annie (an interesting casting choice in Kristen Wiig) and Ares missions director Vincent (Chiwetel Ejiofor) find-out that Mark is alive, they decide they must (as the poster reads) “Bring Him Home”.
Though “The Martian” never gets dull, the first half is far more compelling than the second, which features an overly cinematic and cliché-filled finale. And only early on does Damon get a chance to show-off his acting abilities, when dealing with his situation and possible fate.
Scott has made a good-looking film that doesn’t feature any of the noisy sound issues of last year’s “Damon and Chastain space movie “Interstellar”. What “The Martian” lacks are a lot of actual outer space scenes. We get more atmosphere inside mission control than in the real atmosphere. And unlike “Gravity”, which focused mainly on one person with one goal for the entire time, “The Martian” is filled with distractions, from the long list of supporting characters to the absolutely unnecessary 70’s disco music score. Scott was obviously trying to mimic the success of “Guardians of the Galaxy”’s 80s soundtrack, but the attempt fails badly, adding to the film’s uneven tone.
“The Martian” is solid entertainment, but it’s scattered and too cute for its own good. In short – this is far from an “Out of this World” experience. On The Official LCJ Report Card, “The Martian” gets a C+.
Running Time: 144 min.