Unintentionally funny, otherwise OMG awful!

Rating: 1/10 (28 February 2016)

I watched this movie with a friend who has no technical background, and she pronounced it good. I should note that my friend is Canadian, and with the possible exception of Neil Young, Canadians are an innately polite people.
Meanwhile, being American, I was laughing internally until I spotted.
I also note that I knew the author of the book (when he was a kid) through a workplace and personal friendship with his father. Andy Weir is an incredibly gifted science geek, as is his dad. I therefore know that none of the gross scientific transgressions in the film can be blamed on his ignorance. Andy openly admits to willfully ignoring a few things like the thin Martian atmosphere in the interest of moving the story forward. He correctly understood the impatience of miseducated Americans with annoyances such as basic laws of physics. IOW, he took the movie money and ran, like the smart kid I know him to be.
So I would say that any idiotic disregard of science on screen—the use of Visqueen and duct tape to secure a 6 foot hole vacated by (richly ironic) a blown hatch cover against a 50,000 pound pressure gradient, for example—resulted either from production or directorial indifference. The list of anti-Newtonian horrors goes on, and gets funnier, particularly when Matt Damon punctures his space glove and uses the escaping oxygen to propel himself toward his rescuer. Next, I was half expecting the crew of the rescuing spacecraft to line up, bend over, and torch off an ensemble fart to correct a course deviation.
In any case, this movie was not intended to portray a real human battle against nature, as was so wonderfully chronicled in Apollo 13.
Rather, The Martian was intended to make money by playing on current themes of political correctness and the warm fuzzies of international cooperation, framed by the awesomeness of space.
It fails spectacularly even at this wretched goal—not at making money, you understand, but the furtherance of World Peace—placing its bets on star power, flaccid dialogue, dumbass jokes and cheap CGI effects instead of a solid script, good acting and a credible stab at realism. Jeff Daniels as the director of NASA? My God...
Watch this movie only if you're looking for something to distract you from doing something more useful, such as expressing the dog's impacted anal glands.
Higher emotional content can be found by chopping up an onion.