Red Planet
Reviewed by David Kashimba

 Red Planet is a far better film than Mission To Mars, but it’s still another hokey soap opera. A cast of great actors, including Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss and Tom Sizemore, help tone down the soapsuds and make some of the unbelievable scenes almost believable. Some stunning visual and sound effects also keeps the audience in their seat from beginning to end, yet, when you leave the theatre, you don’t feel uplifted in any way and you can’t say you learned anything new. There is no deeper mythological level weaved in to the story line, as there was in 2001 or the original Star Wars, and there is little pure comedy to entertain you as there was in abundance in Space Cowboys.

There is a little comedy as there is a little bit of a love story but they’re both forced. Even with some very good actors trying to make their lines seem natural, the audience never finds any true laughs in this film, only nervous giggles, and the love story is never developed enough for us to care if the two star-crossed or mars-crossed lovers will ever live through their spaced out adventure, get married and raise children on the polluted planet earth.

The best part of this film is the panoramic scenes shot in Australia’s outback. Why is Hollywood suddenly interested in films about Mars? Perhaps it’s because there is a real possibility that humans will try to colonize the red planet in the next 50 to 100 years. But the last two Mars films only show that Hollywood is as vulnerable to failure as NASA.

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