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75One of the most gorgeous science-fiction movies ever - and probably also one of the most realistic in detail and scientific extrapolation
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75Earthlings beware: The dialogue and characters have less weight than bodies freed from gravity's grip.
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70This isn't "2001," by a long shot, but for 2000, it'll do nicely.
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67Here and there an inspired shot makes the film come alive, and at least three of its sequences had me positioned well on the edge of my seat.
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63I can't recommend Mission to Mars.
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63There are times when it moves into the guilty pleasure zone.
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50The picture is equally long on eye-dazzling camera work and New Age sentimentality.
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It's low-energy, and it's also depressing to know that people are still listening to Van Halen 20 years from now.
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50You can feel the movie going wrong in the first scene.
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50Plot-wise, this is strictly paint-by-numbers stuff.
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50Trying to make sense of this shaggy dog story is like climbing a mountain with glass-smooth sides and quarter-inch toeholds.
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50Dazzling to look at but dreadful to listen to, the film is a tug-of-war of coolness and dreck.
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50For a good 40 minutes or so in the middle of this movie, De Palma is in his element.
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50It's a wonderful piece of filmmaking, but once any mouth is opened the magic is immediately tarnished.
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50He does gorgeous work, but in Mission to Mars he's only going through the motions.
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42In the presence of profound questions, the filmmaker goes profoundly shallow.
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40The script is heavy on platitudes about friendship, but since there isn't a single fully fleshed character in sight, who cares?
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40Halfway through, De Palma literally explodes his narrative to orchestrate a superb deep-space float-opera replete with runaway modules, high-tech lassos, dramatic self-sacrifice, and, in the most surprising maneuver, a montage-driven modicum of actual suspense.
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40All such good intentions collapse by the third act, when Mission to Mars becomes a tediously late pastiche of chimerical nonsense from the early 1980s.
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40The final scenes, which suggest an earnest science lesson presented by a weepy extraterrestrial in an alien planetarium, play like the work of an amateur filmmaker.
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40There doesn't seem to be an original moment in the entire movie, and the score is so repetitive that it could have been downloaded directly from EnnioMorricone.com.
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40It's a gorgeous bad movie, the folly of a great visual stylist.
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38A $100 million production of a 10-cent script, is so clunkily written, so bereft of any engaging ideas or emotions, you'd think De Palma would have sneered at it on first reading and passed
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30What DePalma has never made is a dull movie. Until now.
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30One can only assume all the, ah, good stuff landed on the cutting-room floor, because it sure as hell didn't make it to Mars.
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30There are a few pretty good design effects en route, but not enough to compensate for all the embarrassments.
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25It features well-below-par writing, acting, direction, special effects and music, while oozing a nauseating New Age sentimentality that undermines any tension in the underlying story.
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25Something so sappy, no one would believe me if I told them. It has to be seen to be disbelieved.
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20De Palma's film is a mess from its anxious start all the way through to its new-agey end, relying heavily on cribs from Kubrick and Cameron and even the recent "Apollo 13."
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20Even more frightening are the miserable performances elicited from A-list talent, particularly Tim Robbins and Gary Sinise, both Oscar-nominated actors who perform with all the heartfelt conviction of Hawaiian-shirt-clad teenagers in a high school rendition of "South Pacific."
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20Otherwise fine actors such as Don Cheadle and Gary Sinise spend nearly two hours of film time stand-ing around like department-store dummies mouthing dialogue so wooden it's petrified.
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20In outer space, no one can hear you scream -- of boredom.
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20I'm not sure if it was that or the cloying script, but after a couple of hours of spinning around listening to this drivel I felt like I was going to barf.
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10As intriguing as the premise sounds, Mission to Mars hasn't a single moment of real suspense.
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10Startlingly inept from start to finish -- it's atrociously written, poorly shot and edited and fatally unfocused.
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0It's an experience as frustrating as watching Jeff Gordon drive a stock car through a bowl of oatmeal.