December 12–19, 1996

movie shorts

MARS ATTACKS!

Rarely does a director understand a genre enough to parody it and advance it at the same time. Tim Burton, director of Mars Attacks! — based on a series of Topps bubblegum cards deemed so disturbing that they were quickly removed from the market in the '60s — clearly has a handle on the ugly-space-aliens-attack-Earth genre. From beginning — an incredibly scary scene of a herd of burning horses — to end, Mars Attacks! is no Naked Gun sophmoric spoof-o-rama. Often hilarious and horrific at the same time, Mars Attacks! is the best of the genre, or at least right up there with The Day The Earth Stood Still and either version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The melding of horror and comedy is what makes this movie so effective. All the while, Burton pays homage to the cheesy cheapo B films of the paranoid '50s, bringing back memories of Plan 9 From Outer Space. And speaking of Martians, Burton has created perhaps the most annoying aliens ever depicted on screen. Try walking out of the movie without barking "Ack. Ack-ack," for the next couple of days. One of the most amazing things about Mars Attacks! is the way Burton manages to provide so much quality screen time to the large, celestial cast, which includes Jack Nicholson as media whore U.S. President James Dale (and as Las Vegas wheeler/dealer Art Land), Glenn Close as the president's wife, Annette Bening as Land's wife, Rod Steiger as nuke-the-Martians General Decker, Paul Winfield as the Colin Powell-esque General Casey, Martin Short as a libidinous press secretary, Sarah Jessica Parker as a ditzy fashion-newsgal, Michael J. Fox as her self-absorbed newsman boyfriend, Pierce Brosnan as the wrong-as-can-be scientist guy, Pam Grier as a D.C. mother, Jim Brown as her estranged husband/former pro boxer, Danny DeVito as a loudmouth lawyer and Welsh crooner Tom Jones as Welsh crooner Tom Jones. The trailers you see on TV don't do this movie justice. Ack. Ack-ack.

— Howard Altman

(AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Narberth; UA Grant; UA Riverview)