Yikes

Rating: 1/10 (24 December 2015)

SPOILERS*******************
Ten reasons why THE MARTIAN didn't work.
10. They tried to make it funny. Matt Damon is not funny, except that one time he was a puppet in Team America: World Police. 9. 1990's quality special effects. Couldn't they have hired the effects guy from GRAVITY? Or even watched GRAVITY to see what a space movie looks like in 2015? 8. The main character had no back story. None. Zip. We know nothing about this guy who we are supposed to be rooting on. Except in a random voice over where he said he loved his parents. And that he was the "best botanist on Mars..." I actually hoped they would leave stranded so he could glib himself into the next solar system. 7. The device of the voice over was him talking directly into camera a la THE REAL WORLD - again a 1990's device - known from this day forward as "The Pipe Cam" where Damon would lay out exposition mixed with a bag full of bad jokes. (My guess is this: these clams were pitched by Damon himself because SEE REASON 10) 6. The supporting cast was dreadfully miscast with special accolades for horribleness to the other astronauts, and (the usually terrific) Jeff Daniels. Daniels must have made this film while doing NEWSROOM and forgot to change characters while walking from one sound stage to another. I'm never going to Michigan if this is what happens to a man. (Chiwetel Ejiofor had the only compelling performance. But that's no surprise) The film's best actor was Damon's "skinny" body double who happened to be a foot taller than Damon, but this guy could dry his hair to cover his face until Matt could put his space suit back on like nobody's business. If he hadn't been a 70 year-old John Holmes body double, you never would have guessed it wasn't Damon. 5. The soundtrack was wall-to-wall disco. Yes, disco. Yes, wall-to-wall disco. Which we had finally KILLED by the 90's. 2 hours of disco left behind by the sadistic Commander of the mission. There's even an ABBA song! And I paid $15 dollars to listen to this. The on-the-nose but BEST disco song plays over the closing credits. Not the first disco song where they roll the cast and A.D.'s credits that everyone in LA stays to see. No the second half over the caterers and "Mr. Damon's assistant" credits. The song was I WILL SURVIVE by Gloria Gaynor meant not for the fact that Damon survived, but that WE DID SURVIVE this entire film. Damon's character even jokes about the lameness of the disco, but... 4. Matt Damon is NOT funny! So now we're stuck with bad jokes told by an unfunny actor and lots of bad disco. AND I'm sitting next to some old broad whose hearing aid has fallen out of her ear and she doesn't even notice. So Helen Keller here has scammed Medicare for $500 or whatever a Costco hearing aid runs for these days. The aid apparently has a two second delay because I get to hear disco and bad jokes twice. If I had filled my empty popcorn bucket with water, pulled my t-shirt over my face and had my wife dump it on my mouth and nose it wouldn't have been as tortuous as this movie. Not that water-boarding is torture, but you get it... 3. Derivative. Seen it a hundred times: when Damon successfully docks with his returning shipmates (who had abandoned him, ostensibly because he is so damn annoying) the film cuts from one foreign city to another where Times Square type crowds are rooting on the American as they watch the happenings on their own Jumbotron. Russia, France, communist China rooting for America. America. Right. Another example is they lifted an entire scene where Damon operates on himself removing a piece of antennae which is a beat-for-beat rip-off of Javier Bardim removing a bullet from his leg in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. Only Damon didn't have to blow up a car outside a drugstore for an opiate because... 2. Damon has his own pharmacy at the space camp. When things look grave he resorts to drug abuse. He breaks open a Vicodin, rubs a potato in it, looks into his Pipe Cam and tells us, "I ran out of cat sup 3 weeks ago." It made no sense, so I assumed it was another joke. Because as we all know.... 1. MATT DAMON IS NOT FUNNY.