Diamond in the rough...

Rating: 6/10 (15 January 2016)

The Martian is one of those films that we've grown to be accustomed to; an interesting premise, good cast and promising plot with a lot of potential but that fails at delivery. The Martian is like a great business idea that fails to meet practicality. The Martian is like stolen intellectual property whereby the culprit finally realizes he doesn't really know how to make it productive. The Martian is like having a magic wand and not knowing what to do with it.
An astronaut is left for dead by his crew on a desolate hostile planet 50 million kilometers from Earth after a violent storm having only a few days' supply of food, water and oxygen. Any emergency rescue mission to the planet, Mars, to save him would still take 4 years to arrive. He is alone. He cannot communicate with Earth or members of his crew who are now half way through their journey back home, believing him to be dead. Interesting premise isn't it? Indeed, until you see what the storyline does to it.
Here is a cheery Mark Watney (Matt Damon) who learns of his fate and his response is a few lame jokes directed at a camcorder where he practically gives the audience fun facts about Mars, science and Botany. He keeps talking while constantly nibbling on God-knows-what, which was quite annoying IMO, jokes non-stop about the bad disco music that his mission commander left and practically enjoys his solo stay on Mars. Not the reaction one would expect, eh? I guess being stranded alone on planet Mars with 68 sols' (Mars days) provision of food and water isn't such a bummer after all. Mark's attitude toward his situation is as if he merely just woke up and found he had the whole house to himself so he does the Salsa across the living room in his drawers and showers without the curtains.
We expect a lot of tension, drama, panic attacks, agoraphobia, loneliness, fear, hopelessness, bouts of insanitybut no; Mark Watney is quite content with his situation. He might as well build a golf course with all his Botany ingenuity and/or a Holiday Inn. Mark solves every problem one by one as they come to him. Basically nothing bad happens to him. At least HE has a magic wand and he knows how to use it.
The story itself is not very realistic. When the director of NASA learns that the Chinese have agreed to lend them a spacecraft that they've been building in secret to save a man they couldn't care less about, his response over the phone (with the director of the Chinese space agency) is "oh okay, I understand. Thank you" then hangs up and says "yes!" Like a high school kid whose crush just accepted to be his prom date. He might as well have said "Oh okay, I understand. Thank you, by the way what music are you currently listening to? Have you tried our Justin Bieber?" We are also told that messages between Earth and Mars have a 30 minute delay but when Mark Watney finally finds a way to communicate with NASA, the conversations go so smoothly it could have been via KIK or IM.
Matt Damon himself was good but he clearly didn't take the role too seriously. The fact that they had to use a body double to show his weight loss gives an idea of the amount of dedication he gave to the film. Recall what Christian Bale did for The Machinist? And he wasn't even stranded on a planet 100 million miles away; he lived across from a Chick-fil-A and Pizza Hut.
SPOILER ALERT. If you haven't watched the movie this is where you should stop reading this review.
The ending of the film could very well be the most disappointing part. I comforted myself after the lack of drama with the thought that in the end, when Mark Watney is supposed to leap from his spacecraft towards the returned crew in the vastness of space, all the tension would pour in. It does not. He might as well have gotten to them on a hoverboard with both hands in his pockets. Mark is really one lucky bastard huh?
The Martian is a visual spectacle with very believable Martian landscape, space exploration apparatus and (not so) believable space science, but sadly that is all. It fails to explore all possibilities that the premise offers and instead relies on fratboy humor the likes of "my balls are frozen!" and "take that, Neil Armstrong!" It is a film about the psychological effects of being stranded alone on an unfriendly planet zillions of miles from home, but it hardly shows any.
I didn't hate the movie, nor do I advise not to see it, but I didn't love it either even though it is signed by the great Ridley Scott. It won't be registered as a classic but it'll surely seduce The Academy who are too often impressed with high production value, familiar leading heads and unnecessarily long running yarns.