Stayin' Alive

Rating: 7/10 (20 February 2016)

As soon as I saw Jeff Daniels I realised this picture was going to be Dumb And Dumber than I was initially hoping; most of us live in hope. But at least he makes sense paired with Sean Bean. Serious scientist Matt Damon in a life and death situation relishing using naughty adult words doesn't help. I hadn't seen Robinson Crusoe On Mars for decades either and to see him brought up to digital date was the next best thing – although continually and sometimes hopelessly incongruous 70's disco music kept taking me back to the ye olden primitive days when NASA actually had some of their employees cavorting about on the Moon.
Damon is left for dead on Mars after a big storm and disaster and has to survive and fend for himself until death or rescue. It's all extremely well done, with the usual seemingly minute attention to detail looked after, and is sufficiently gripping and entertaining. All of us millions of news-hungry space fans cheer Bravo! from Times Square, Red Square and Trafalgar Square for CNN to cover this opinion as Breaking News. And great that the making of the film gave 15,000 people jobs and purpose (the end credits seemed to be much more populous), and I only wish there could be many sequels to keep them all employed. But now to delete it.
Unlike Damon I'm not going to have to science the poo out of this but – I would rather recommend the equally corny, escapist and similar film but with more honest human characterisation and emotion Mission To Mars instead. And Jeff Daniels wasn't in it either.