When Jack Nicholson was given the script for “Mars Attacks!” — the sci-fi comedy extravaganza in which he plays the president of a United States that is being invaded by Mars — he reportedly offered to play every part in the movie. Why didn’t director-producer Tim Burton let him do it? This “Mars Attacks!” script needs something radical, and the sight of five or six Nicholsons running around as little green men conquering our planet might have goosed the whole picture.
As it is, Nicholson doesn’t get his chance to pull off a Peter Sellers-“Dr. Strangelove”-style tour de farce. Burton only lets him play two parts: image-conscious President James Dale and sleazy Las Vegas real estate speculator Art Land. And though that’s apparently enough to save the world, it’s not enough to save the picture.
For almost two jaw-dropping hours, Nicholson and a super-powered all-star cast — including Glenn Close and Annette Bening as the wives of President Dale and scumball Land, Pierce Brosnan as the fatuously optimistic professor Donald Kessler, Martin Short as randy presidential spin doctor Jerry Ross, Paul Winfield and Rod Steiger as the nice and nasty Gen. Casey and Gen. Decker, Michael J. Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker as narcissistic TV reporters and singer Tom Jones as himself — wander around deliberately artificial-looking sets. They keep doing dumb things while the giggling green little meanies from the Red Planet blow everyone away.
In many ways, “Mars Attacks” is a one-joke movie: Earthlings are dopey. But even that single joke doesn’t always come off. Burton and his British screenwriter Jonathan Gems based their script on the “Mars Attacks!” cards that came with Topps bubble gum in the early ’60s. And though the idea of adapting a multimillion-dollar movie from collector cards is funny in itself, the script here can’t be much of an improvement on the cards — or even on the bubble gum.
In the film, Burton’s Martian armada surrounds the Earth, sparking a media frenzy. The Martians then land in the Arizona desert and, and within minutes, deep-fry most of their greeting party — led by Paul Winfield’s benign Gen. Casey, who seems to be modeled on Gen. Colin Powell.
After issuing a formal apology for the massacre, the little green space-beings ask President Dale if they can address a joint session of Congress. When Dale complies and the Martians show up, they pull their ray guns again and incinerate the legislature. (Even if we lost one branch of the government, “two out of three ain’t bad,” President Land later insists, trying to rationalize the destruction. But anyone who’s ever suffered through an hour or two of C-Span’s stupefying U.S. congressional coverage may treasure the moment.)
By now the evil little green guys — who keep chuckling at the stupidity of their Earth hosts — have made their intentions sufficiently obvious to all but the most deluded peaceniks, like Brosnan’s Kessler. In the mass carnage that ensues, with world capitals exploding like bubblegum bubbles, Burton and Gems focus on three locales.
First: Washington, city of nincompoops, where first Lady Marsha Dale fusses with the chandeliers and spin doctor Ross has assignations with Martian babes in the purple-walled “Kennedy Room.”
Second: Las Vegas, city of gambling and crass phonies, where Nicholson’s Land tries to cash in on the crisis, his wife, Barbara (Bening), goes New-Agey, and real-life “What’s New, Pussycat?” singer Tom Jones hooks up with a character called Rude Gambler (Danny De Vito) and retired ex-boxing champ Byron Williams — a role seemingly modeled on George Foreman but played, for no apparent reason, by Hall of Fame fullback Jim Brown.
Third: the small-town Midwest, where a slacker and his granny (Lukas Haas and Sylvia Sidney) may have the answer to the invasion.
As a critic who thinks Nicholson is one of America’s greatest movie actors and Burton (“Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands”) is one of its most imaginative filmmakers, I’m at a loss to explain this picture. Despite delightful scenes and a great cast, it comes across as an overblown, costly dud.
It’s the kind of befuddlingly bad show that probably only really talented moviemakers and actors can make: one long gargantuan dig in the ribs. The sets — and the creepy little Martians themselves — are the movie’s one real triumph; you can have a laughing jag just watching them. Burton and designer Wynn Thomas catch the blank, eerie look of ’50s science fiction movies. But the inflated all-star casting works against “Mars Attacks” — as it would have worked against a funny, low-key, sci-fi parody like “Dark Star,” and as it sabotaged Mel Brooks’ “Spaceballs.”
After a while, all the familiar faces begin floating by like balloons in the Macy’s Christmas parade or guests on the David Letterman Show — and without much more to do. Nicholson, who was Oliver Stone’s first choice to play Richard Nixon, suggests a Nixon type filtered through Mad Magazine. And Close, as Marsha, sometimes suggests Pat Nixon. They’re a fantastically talented pair, but they’re wasted here.
That’s why it would have been a kick to see Nicholson play several parts. But it’s almost depressing to see him confined to the two over-obvious roles he plays here, pouring his heart into Jonathan Gems’ dorky couch-potato jokes. Why lavish such talent on this underdone script? (Burton should have forgotten both Gems and his beloved bubble-gum cards and taken a peek at Fredric Brown’s wry ’50s “Astounding Science Fiction” comic tale of invading little green men, “Martians Go Home,” which uses a similar idea with much more humor and suspense.)
In a way, “Mars Attacks!” is a consciously bad movie. Burton’s last picture was “Ed Wood,” a bio of Hollywood’s ’50s King of Bad and his own alien-invasion turkey, “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” When Burton shows the Martian armada as a regatta of little toy flying saucers hovering over Earth, he’s probably evoking Ed Wood and his toy saucers on strings in “Plan 9.” Ironically, “Mars Attacks!” is the kind of movie Wood would have loved to have made.
But Wood had the excuse of low budgets and impossible shooting schedules. Here, the many hokey jokes just die on screen. The movie often seems to lack satirical focus. Rod Steiger’s bellicose general is a caricature out of “Dr. Strangelove,” while Brosnan’s Kessler is like the scientist Carrington in the 1951 “The Thing,” arguing to keep the monster alive.
Do they really belong in the same movie? Full of adolescent gags and trippy effects, “Mars Attacks!” is made by people who love genre film tackiness, corniness and absurdity, but can’t seem to stop wildly overinflating them. To get an idea of the curious effect of this movie, you’d have to imagine what “Dr. Strangelove” might have been like, if the script had been written not by Kubrick and Terry Southern, but by the writers on hack TV sitcoms like “My Favorite Martian” or “I Dream of Jeannie” — right after they’d knocked back a few stiff drinks.
The whole movie seems a little hazy — but one good thing you can say about it is that it tends to whittle “Independence Day” back down to size. With its portrait of mass paranoia and dysfunctional America fighting back, “Mars Attacks!” has its moments. But then, so did “Plan 9 from Outer Space.”
”MARS ATTACKS!”
(star) (star) 1/2
Directed by Tim Burton; written by Jonathan Gems, based on the “Mars Attacks!” Topps trading cards; photographed by Peter Suschitzky; edited by Chris Lebenzon; production designed by Wynn Thomas; music by Danny Elfman; produced by Burton, Larry Franco. A Warner Brothers release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:43. MPAA rating: PG-13.
THE CAST
Professor Dale/Art Land ………….. Jack Nicholson
Marsha Dale …………………….. Glenn Close
Barbara Land ……………………. Annette Bening
Donald Kessler ………………….. Pierce Brosnan
Rude Gambler ……………………. Danny De Vito
Jerry Ross ……………………… Martin Short
