John Carter Of Mars

John Carter of Mars - the live action Disney adaptation of the oldie timey work of the same name - is likely to be remembered for how catastrophically it tanked at the box office, putting it up there with other similarly high outlay/low return flops as Treasure Planet and Atlantis: The Lost Empire in the Disney hall of shame...

The thing is - as with Treasure Planet and Atlantis which between them pretty much killed off Disney's traditional animated features for a decade - John Carter of Mars... isn't bad. It's actually considerably better than either of those two offerings but it's really not good either.

There's nothing that sticks out as memorable beyond the visuals. Despite clocking in at two hours, there's no real investment in any of the characters and there's never any real suspense or tension. Not to mention that the fish out of water device isn't particularly well used - John Carter arrives on Mars and seems to work it all out pretty quickly and once a magical plot device (never explained) allows him to understand the language of the people on Mars, it's all pretty straight forward. The strange thing about the universal translator is that it doesn't translate the weird words and so, almost half the dialogue is people saying silly words or names.

There's nothing wrong with that occasionally but the words in question are just so ridiculous that it makes it hard to take it seriously... and the film plays it very straight, that alone makes the film feel rather stilted which is worsened by the pacing. Really, the two hour run time does drag and it feels as if this could have been cut down to ninety minutes and it would have been for the better.

It feels as if this really WANTED to be a kind of fun sci-fi romp - possibly in the manner of Pirates of the Caribbean - but it got bogged down in the source material. The plot is pretty straight forward - John Carter dicks around a bit to give us some minor character development and then ends up on Mars, find out he's super strong and can jump like a kangaroo on steroids and saves a princess...

This princess is not only hot (pretty much a given) AND a super science boffin (having discovered the "ninth ray", which is apparently super special awesome) but is also an accomplished sword fighting bad ass, so... she's a keeper. Anyway, evil shapeshifting monks want McNulty from The Wire to marry her, allowing them to rule the planet... or something, the motivations of the "Thurn" are never really explained beyond vague insinuation that once they've got a puppet ruler on Mars, they'll turn their attention toward Earth.

Anyway, John Carter and the princess run away from the four armed green guys, find out the plans of the evil shapeshifting monks (because apparently a race capable of instantaneous interplanetary travel don't know about passwords) and have the mandatory chases and escapes. It's all very paint by numbers and really, there's just nothing to set this apart from the crowd and the ending just feels like clunky framing with obvious sequel baiting for a sequel that will never come.

It's not good, it's not bad... it's just average and despite some nice visuals, it's easily forgettable. Something to watch when you're not really feeling like paying a lot of attention, really.

Wall-E is the much anticipated Pixar film about a cute little robot thinger... although, given the fact that Pixar is churning out more films like Finding Nemo than Toy Story or The Incredibles - you have to wonder why people love them so... Disney's insipid influence is clearly starting to show... but at least Wall-E isn't an orphan or something...

So, the film starts out with Wall-E zipping around a deserted Earth city which is littered with mountains of garbage. Him and his cockroach pal hang out and it's all very cute - no dialogue or anything, just him mooching around. Very pretty but beyond indicating that humanity are out in space, not a lot is going on.

So, this could go on forever but then, Eve - a shiny i-pod like robot - comes along and then we essentially have more of the same for a while until she finds a plant, which she takes and then causes her to shut down. Then she gets hoisted off by her ship and we have a long protracted scene where Wall-E is basically trying to get back to her. Again - it's got some great visual spectacle but the plot content is microscopic and dialogue is minimal... but then given the fact that both the main characters are all but mute - that shouldn't be a surprise.

We find humanity has been - as intimated on Earth - floating around in space because things went tits up. This has apparently led them to become pampered blobs who achieve nothing as their every whim is catered for from birth to death by fleets of cutesy robots. Some deranged Right wingers in the USA think this is liberal propaganda but really, it seems like more of an excuse to have the cutesy robots flying around. The humans are pretty much relegated to second place and besides a tangential and mostly irrelevant subplot of romance between two of them spherical humans, only the Captain really has any significance at all.

Because, as it turns out - the EVE robots have been checking Earth for signs of life for 700 and now it's become capable of sustaining life again. Which leads to operation recolonisation - heading back to Earth and starting over... it's not made clear if the Axiom contains the entirety of the surviving human population nor why - as they have FTL - why they didn't just try looking for a new planet... but then, this film makes little effort to be engaging for adults like Toy Story and The Incredibles. Which is sad because part of what made Pixar good was the ability to relate to more than one demographic...

Anyway, for reasons that aren't entirely clear - the plant inside EVE has disappeared and that needs to be stuck in an analyser so everyone can go home... but the prospect of going home starts to get to the Captain, as he realises that humanity has literally spent the last 700 years sitting on its ass. As it turns out though, this is because project "Cleanup" failed and this has - for some reason... mostly that of plot - been kept secret. The auto-pilot, which is literally an evil steering wheel, then decides that the status quo must be maintained...

As one can imagine, this leads to more chasing around. Some of it actually in space, where Wall-E and EVE get to act about as romantic as robots get. Naturally, the plant is found and they must rush to try and get it back... so, a lot more chasing and pretty CGI etc. but often little amusing or interesting... it would be no simplification to say, evil auto-pilot is defeated, plant is returned and everyone returns to Earth and lives happily ever after.

There's just nothing to it. Yes - it's pretty and yes, it's cute but even for a paltry ninety minutes, this really struggles to justify itself plot wise. Of course, that's what you'd expect when you've got your main characters a couple of words away from mute. There's some nice emoting from both Wall-E and EVE, considering they lack actual faces and the obvious thread in the film is as much the relationship between the two of them as it is the struggle to get humanity back to Earth but there's not really much time taken out from the set pieces and mooching around to give any justice to the latter. The relationship is nicely understated for a kids film... but really, that's all you can say about this film. It's a good kid's film.

That's a stark contrast to the aforementioned Toy Story and The Incredibles, which one could say were pretty good films - period. That's because they had layers to them, there was a plot, characters, action and a humour that functioned on more than one level. This film makes no concessions to adults and so... what is there to say? Fine for the kids but not something to seek out unless you're a blind and unquestioning Pixar fan.