Well-made but vaguely disappointing and flat with no emotional engagement

Rating: 6/10 (1 October 2015)

Hmmm, it wasn't THAT good. It's well made and Damon probably saves it from utter failure but despite all the "science" there are many contrivances, conveniences and plot holes. Characters are depressingly flat (she's the computer nerd that keeps a hex chart on her PC, he's the chemist that can do Heisenberg-type feats with kitchen ingredients, she's the tight-laced mission commander with a secret passion for disco music, sigh, he's the Nasa bigwig who just sees the numbers, he's the genius loner doing the hard math and lives off only coffee, sigh, you get the picture) and dialogue is trying too hard to be clever and snappy. The dynamics of the team on the mission are too perfect to be really believable and, for me, all the buddy-buddy, black-and-white, suits vs astronauts stuff is so by the numbers that it really annoyed. The structure of the plot is very procedural and it seems that Watney only needed to encounter each kind of problem once - when he had it solved then it never happened again despite all the equipment on Mars getting older and older and ... but I digress. There was also one too many scenes in which someone had a brainwave in relation to a problem and then walks away mumbling to themselves while someone else follows them saying "What? What? What did you think of?". In the end, I didn't care what happened to anyone. The movie didn't engage me in that way - sure it was interesting and nice to look at but it main message is that science shall save you if you work it. Science may be the new religion but fanaticism to anything is a blinding and dangerous thing. There are some people at whom this film is perfectly targeted but for many more this will be a good-looking and distracting work with little real satisfaction. I'd still give it 6/10 and on a good day when my disappointment abates I might up that to a 7/10 at best!