The Geeks Shall Inherit Mars

Rating: 5/10 (6 February 2016)

Dull and far too long, Ridley Scott's space opera has virtually no suspense and little by way of emotional involvement; where tears of joy should be flowing, all you feel is cold and disinterested. Matt Damon (usually reliable; here, vapid and one-note) plays an astronaut/botanist who is left for dead on Mars by his crew (led by Jessica Chastain, equally monotonous--where is the adventurous actress from "The Tree Of Life" and "Zero Dark Thirty"?) and is forced to use his gee-whiz skills to survive while NASA figures out how to get him back. There seems little at stake in Scott's dramatic telling: every calamity that befalls the main character is simply another setback which seems to have no impact on him: you're given the notion that rationing is forcing him to thin out, yet Damon's physique never changes; and for all the talk in Drew Goddard's screenplay about the tremendous stress Damon is under, he shows very little sign of it. Goddard's script (based on Andy Weir's wildly popular novel, unread) is filled with lots of technical jargon and celebrates the geekiness of the characters (the absentminded genius geek here is played by a wasted Donald Glover) but they're not nearly interesting enough to sympathize with or even caricatures you can laugh at. And the film's basic conceit--long-term survival on another planet--seems too spurious to make an entire film from; you're left to assume the science of the endeavor has its basis in fact and that the jargon bandied about is enough above the average viewer's head (at least it is to this head) to seem realistic. But who knows? Sure, "Insterstellar" had just as much conjecture as "The Martian" but Christopher Nolan's sincerity and heart won you over. Here, Scott's technical bravura is on full display but he has little interest in being anything other than a technician--what should be a lush, romantic, crowd-pleasing adventure instead is rendered limp and hollow, an exercise gorgeous to look at and not much else.