MARS ATTACKS! Starring Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close. Directed by Tim Burton. Category 2A. Now showing at Ocean, New York, Majestic, UA (Queensway, Sha Tin, Times Square, Whampoa, Bonds, Kowloon, Aberdeen), Jade, Park, Empress, Broadway (Kwai Fong, Yuen Long, Mongkok, Kowloon Bay), Yuen Long, Tuen Mun.
If nothing else, Mars Attacks! will be remembered as the best film ever to be inspired by a set of trading cards - based as it is on a set of Topps Martian invasion cards released in the US in the 1960s. The resulting movie is a way-out War Of The Worlds, rich in director Tim Burton's eccentric imagery and drawing equally on sci-fi classics like This Island Earth and movie disasters like Ed Wood's infamous Plan Nine From Outer Space.
The flat structure of Mars Attacks! may make it a little obscure for mainstream viewers, and it will probably only be appreciated by fans of monster cinema and followers of the peculiar films of Tim Burton. It is certainly an important Burton work and while it lacks the gothic drama of, say, Edward Scissorhands or the wicked humour of Beetlejuice!, Mars Attacks! could well stand as his signature piece.
Burton has always been fascinated by the kitsch of American society and here he elevates it to centre-stage. It is as if he decided to forget about packaging his ideas as a story in order to concentrate on what interests him most - monsters.
With Mars Attacks! Burton goes straight for the tacky and superficial and sticks with it.
There is little of the contemporary comment that accompanied much of the science-fiction movies of the 1950s, which took their cue from the Cold War.