EW
Reviews M2M
The entertainment magazine
ENTERTAINMENT
WEEKLY has reviewed M2M. They didn't think
too highly of it! 3.10.00
Bombing 'Mission'
''Mission to Mars'' -- The search for intelligent
life takes a detour in Brian De Palma's bumpy
sci-fi ride
(Rated PG)
Mission to Mars
is set in 2020, a future just near enough
to taste. (The movie prides itself on being
''NASA-real''; manned landing may indeed
be a reality by then, although experts predict
it will happen unaccompanied by the horns
and timpani of Ennio Morricone's bombastic
score.) Astronaut Luke Graham (Don Cheadle)
and his crew set off to make history by touching
down on the Red Planet, an assignment that
should have gone to Luke's best friend, Jim
McConnell (Gary Sinise).
But Jim is too psychologically
delicate, still wincing over the death of
his wife and fellow astronaut, Maggie (Kim
Delaney). So Luke goes up while Jim watches
from ground control, as do colleagues Woody
Blake (Tim Robbins) and his wife, Terri (Connie
Nielsen). Woody and Terri, incidentally, are
the smoochingest married couple in all of
NASA, and wait till you see them do it weightless....
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Connie
Nielson in M2M
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Well, something goes
seriously wrong on Mars. So Jim, Woody, Terri,
and utility astronaut No. 4, Phil (Jerry O'Connell),
take off, psychologically ready or not, on
a recovery mission. Woody and Terri, incidentally,
lip-locking when they're supposed to
be pulling thrusters, are a setback to married
couples everywhere who want to go into orbit
together professionally speaking.
Luke's journey to Mars
is fraught with fear and danger; Woody and
Jim's journey to Mars is fraught with even
more fear and danger. And director Brian De
Palma LOVES danger. Cocking his point of view
from one side of the frame to the other, he
noses in to give the sense of anxiety as well
as to get close to the action when, for example,
the rocket springs an air leak. (A frozen
icicle of liquid that escapes the puncture
hole and breaks off, turning slowly in deep
space, echoes the famous tumbling-bone-to-spacecraft
image in ''2001.'')
But the actors might
as well be floating frozen stiffs too. With
colorless, interchangeable characters uttering
the generic sci-fi babble of screenwriters
Jim Thomas, John Thomas, and Graham Yost (''You're
losing pressure, Jim. We could embolize!''
''Come on, people, let's work the problem!''
''The universe is not chaos. It's connection.
Life reaches out to life!''), there's not
much opportunity for any serious acting, and
none is required. That is, if you don't count
a few hard eyeball-to-eyeball stares
through helmet visors as one says to another,
''Listen to me, goddamn it. You have to stop,
and you have to stop ''now''!'' Even Sinise
and Cheadle, two splendid performers who actually
''can'' express plenty without words --
visors and all -- are overcome by
the dialogue.
''Mission to Mars''
wants us to think about lofty things: the
bravery of explorers, the ingenuity of our
nation's space program, the humility required
to comprehend the possibility that we earthlings
are not the be-all and end-all of
creation. But De Palma's film is too embarrassed,
too jittery and self-conscious to hush
up and pay attention. In the presence of profound
questions, the filmmaker goes profoundly shallow.
And the answers, ah, the answers: They're
right out of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy,'' with De Palma waving, ''So long
and thanks for all the fish!''
C- --
Lisa Schwarzbaum
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