MARS ATTACKS! (75)

Directed by: Tim Burton

Starring: Jack Nicholson, Lukas Haas, Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan

The Pitch: Mars Attacks!

Theo Sez: GREMLINS twelve years on, though also an opportunity for Burton to reiterate his opposition to America's success ethic and his sympathy with losers and fringe-dwellers, the folks who live in places with names like Lockjaw, Kentucky and Pahrump, Nevada. In this variation on THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, everyone who's smug or arrogant or pompous (or, indeed, successful) gets it in the neck; everyone who's klutzy or dreamy or a bit of a misfit becomes a hero. It's a long way from the gung-ho heroics of INDEPENDENCE DAY, though in fact the underlying theme of that movie - that whatever's "out there" is both malign and unreasonable - is even stronger here; indeed, it's surely not implausible to connect this theme of evil aliens to a larger mood in the world today, and especially in America - a xenophobia and fear of immigrants, and a growing isolationism (a double-bill of this and ID4, with a side-order of FARGO, may well make you decide never to leave the house again). Fortunately the mood is joyous rather than dystopian, bursting with exuberant anarchy and, right from the magical opening credits (hundreds of dinky spaceships hovering over a blood-red planet) visually witty and imaginative, referencing not just 50s sci-fi but also films as diverse as DR. STRANGELOVE and THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (the sinuous rhythms of the "Trojan whore" - perhaps the most out-there sequence in a Hollywood movie this year - reminiscent of the lethally graceful "robot Kali" in that 1940 movie). Unsurprisingly, the actual battle with the Martians gets a little lost here - the climax is rushed, lame and a total botch. Then again, the sight of Tom Jones singing would probably have rendered any subsequent ending anti-climactic.