Sporadically entertaining but slighter than expected.

Rating: 6/10 (7 October 2015)

Ridley Scott's latest arrived with a significant measure of critical praise, but ultimately left me feeling a little disappointed. It's neither funny enough to be a comedy, nor tense enough to be an edge-of-the-seat thriller.
Opening up with a scene of scientists operating on planet Mars, a storm hits the site and as the astronauts make their escape, Matt Damon's botanist, Mark Watney is left behind when hit by flying debris.
The initial scenes of Watney attending to his wounds, realising he has to survive for potentially years before being rescued, and then setting about his tech- survivalist existence is pretty entertaining. However, as Earth and, later, his former crew on board space station Hermes learn that he has survived, the film starts to unravel. A stellar but unwieldy cast begin planning his rescue, via a series of clichéd press conferences, bizarre skype calls with Bruce Ng, the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and meetings with Sean Bean's Mitch Henderson, struggling to act his way out of a (now 5p) pound shop bag.
I found that once Watney had solved a few problems, his plight became less and less interesting, when all signs pointed to a successful, against all the odds, rescue by his former crew on Hermes. Don Glover's appearance as, ahem, astrodynamicist Rich Purnell allowed the former Community star to go through his full range of facial gurns, but, in the end, was just yet another character at NASA we didn't need. Add to this Kristen Wiig's pointless turn as a NASA PR guru and we end up with a galaxy of stars fighting for screen time.
On board the Hermes, Michael Pena's Martinez is a fun character and featured in my favourite scene, darkly cajoling Watney for being a botanist. However, the ensuing decision for all to add 500+ days to their mission time to rescue him is slightly preposterous. This would be forgivable if the rescue mission itself wasn't so predictable. I also didn't find Damon's Watney in any way as charming as other people seem to have and was praying vainly he'd suffocate out in space.
I think the recent spate of intelligent sci fi movies has led to a new audience, which can only be a good thing. However, I just feel this has maybe meant a less critical eye is being cast. It's entertaining in parts, but compared to the likes of Interstellar it's far too slight. Compare it to Duncan Jones' Moon and it lacks enough pathos. Compare it to Edge of Tomorrow and it's not enough fun. Wait until it's on DVD.