The Martian: 2 stars for the effort, nil for everything else (idea, execution, ...)

Rating: 2/10 (26 March 2016)

The review contains some spoilers!
I wish Matt Damon carried on with his ingenious surviving tactics, fighting depression, fighting for each day until his death on Mars. I can understand that American military would send a chopper to rescue a soldier left behind (it costs them a little if they fail) but to spend huge sums to save an astronaut who by definition are meant to live and sometimes die in outer space is a bit like Saving Private Damon on a grand scale. Hence I see this flick as an American movie that is short on ideas, and would rather use clichés than be different.
So everything was fine until he got in touch with Earth: from there on we got inter-departmental fighting at NASA, young black scientist who is of Nobel Price winner stock, a bit clumsy and with some unorthodox ways of explaining his theories to bosses (but everything is allowed if you can save boss's bacon), then help from, basically, an enemy (Chinese - and it looked like a big favour but you wouldn't guess that because the Chinese involvement was described in about 2 minutes, probably in as many minutes as the clumsiness of young black brilliant scientist etc, please see above). And young blonds with big glasses to look like scientists, hilarious.
The key mystery here was: is this a fairy tale or Sci-Fi drama? I watched the Stardust the other night and it didn't feel stupid if I believed that you can actually fly to the stars if you light a Babylon candle (not just because I never had a Babylon candle in my hands). But The Martian wants to convince us that if you are stranded on Mars and you don't have a rocket, enough fuel, etc, you should look for a box with rubber bands (like those ones your grandma used for jars) and, after performing some mathematical calculations involving the gravitational forces, air density, the thickness of the rubber bands, their length and quality (throw away the Chinese ones), you can actually build a launcher that would take you to space. Unfortunately, I had rubber bands in my hands so it feels stupid to believe it. Some people are saying that the things described in the movie did happen, and maybe they did, but 50 years ago. They also made different films 50 years ago.
All in all, as my teacher used to said, 2 out of 10 for the effort.