Meh, but mostly annoying because of the lame female roles

Rating: 6/10 (6 January 2016)

Watched this on a plane, had heard great things about it and figured it would be an entertaining 2.5 hours on my flight. It was okay, but i'm not sure where all the hype is coming from. Matt Damon puts in a good but not great performance. And the plot is pretty predictable without any particularly exciting moments. The whole time i just was thinking "meh".
But the movie did manage to consistently annoy me with its subtle misogyny. How? First, the basic premise of a man getting trapped on a planet and quickly figuring out his way to survive, all the while narrating his amazing accomplishments to the audience. All Matt Damon does is narrate his smartness. It is basically 2 hours of Matt Damon mansplaining Mars. Annoying because this movie would literally never be made with a female lead because the world could not fathom a woman lecturing the audience that long. Second annoyance was that, with the exception of Kate Mara, there was not a woman in this movie who said a line without looking at a male character for reassurance or confirmation that she was making the right decision. I didn't notice it for the first 30 minutes, and then once i noticed it, it became like a drinking game. Kristin Wiig, Jessica Chastain, the blond woman who works at NASA. Seriously, they don't do a single thing in this movie except look at the men to see what they think. Other than a handful of exceptions, the men in the movie never do this. It was both comical and infuriating to watch. Argh.