The Middling

Rating: 4/10 (23 February 2020)

Charismatic leading actors can elevate films of they are well cast and 'The Martian' illustrates this point better than most. Matt Damon has enough screen presence to carry this mess off and carry the audience along with him.
A large and illustrious production team also maintain acceptably high production standards and fairly imaginative production design work.....although at no single point did I think that anything looked like it couldn't have easily been filmed on Earth in a studio on a sound stage or semi dessert location. There wasn't a single moment of remarkableness in the visual design of the film.
The artistic designs of the space vehicles and space travel seemed particularly unremarkable compared to other contemporary space sci-fi films.
The script was miserably distracted from the fairly routine "Lone survivor" narrative structure of 'carrying on surviving at any cost' main plot by silly space stories about loads of mundane things: such as extremely likely threats and risks to possible near-future spacefarers; and scientific/engineering challenges, being treated utterly incredibly and implausibily.
I did not find this ratio of straight and silly to be a harmonious tonal balance.
Thank heavens for Matt Damon. The stand out feature of this feature film. All the other actors could have been "anyones", their characters certainly were.
Ridley Scott made excellent films, sadly, he now seems to make indulgent films referential only to his own preoccupations. How will his 21st century ouvre be compared to his 20th? My answer is frankly: "unfavourably".
I rate a 4/10 for a film that greatly disappointed me, but I'd recommend this firmly to Matt Damon fans and indeed, with rather more qualification, to anyone appreciative of star power/screen presence/ leading actors