Escape from Mars

That's what I would say if this movie had any redeemable merit whatsoever!

First, the good things: ....

Now the bad things: The acting was subpar, even for television. The script looked like they were winging it. The conflict did little to interest me, which doesn't say much for the lulls in the movie. The idea was completely unoriginal. Even the credits looked pasted together.

I'll elaborate. The conflict. I didn't feel, even for a second, any ounce of satisfaction or grip from anything this movie tried. Anything the movie attempted to do was undone by stupidity, and any progress the conflict made to the situation or the story was resolved in about five minutes, and everything was back to normal.

The characters were two-dimensional. None were distinguishable from the others in anything except for their jobs (one was a designer--that's all I could recall). Their character qualities were shifted around and changed so often, they had the consistency of water. I couldn't tell one character apart from any other aside from their looks, and even then I had a hard time.

How about the idea? It's been done to death. Mission to Mars and Red Planet both came out around the same time (maybe a little later) and both were by far this movie's superior.

This movie was just junk. You will NOT be satisfied, even if you're investing only your time. Avoid this at all costs. In fact, burn the copies you DO find. I don't want this movie EVER going around again!!! Possibly the worst thing I've seen. And I've seen bad.

OK, I'm only about 30 minutes into watching this on SciFi even as I type, and Tom Kenny is all over this thing! He has tons of screen time and lines up the wazoo, but he isn't credited! Watch for him on the quaint little launch control set as the "countdown guy". I guess he's supposed to be the capcom, but the launch director does most of the talking to the crew.

OK, I'd better get back to watching this delightfully high-cholesterol space-soap-opera.

Don't go out of your way to watch this movie. If your bored and nothing else is on, it might be a decent gamble.

Of if you like really predictable bad sci-fi with mediocre actors.

ESCAPE FROM MARS is a low rent TV movie that feels hopelessly out of its depth when trying to portray a convincing picture of astronauts visiting Mars. It's a very typical, predictable kind of movie in which the storyline feels drawn out. We see the astronauts as they say goodbye to their loved ones, as they take off, as they travel through space, as they land on Mars, and then the inevitable escape.

The problem lies with the script, which presents these characters as the most boring people imaginable. There are no psychos on board, nobody loses control, instead they're all involved in cheesy family dramas and sentimental tripe. This should be a tense thriller that sees the crew battling technical issues and the like but for the most part the emphasis is on the non-existent human drama.

It doesn't help that the cast members put in the most routine performances imaginable and that there's an almost entire lack of incident so that the viewer is left twiddling his or her thumbs and waiting for things to kick off. Sadly, they never do.

My advice: If you really, really, really can't avoid seeing it... see it in fast-forward mode. Shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes which is still too long for a movie like this. Dreadful simplistic dialogues and a predictable story. This movie offers little more excitement than doing the dishes. Surgeon's health warning: avoid seeing it. Unless you fancy a nice quiet coma every once in a while.