Red Planet
When good pet robots go bad!

"This is the script? You're kidding, right?"

There is a certain select group of women -- namely, Linda Hamilton, Carrie Fisher and Sigourney Weaver -- that have come to be synonymous with all that is cool in sci-fi entertainment. Smart, strong, and capable of kicking all kinds of ass, these are the actresses that have attracted legions of chicks (and yes, we are legion -- and here's seventeen damn issues to prove it) to genre film, and yeah, okay, a couple of guys as well. These are the alien-slaying bad-asses and gun-toting princesses many of us grew up on, and looking back, those James Cameron and pre-Jar Jar George Lucas years were pretty good times for us girls. The 1990s were not so kind; aside from TV characters like Buffy and The Simpering Wuss Formerly Known as Agent Scully, there was nary a strong, dominating female genre presence to be found.

That is, until Carrie-Anne Moss.

Just as a precaution, I'll tell you right now there is no way anyone in their right mind would ever want to see Red Planet. But, on the occasion that you find yourself bound, gagged, and dragged to this idiotic Mission to Mars wanna-be (and that, really, should tell you everything you need to know right there), do note that there are about twenty minutes of this farce that may be worth your time. Those are the scenes featuring only Ms. Moss, and while there are certain considerations even this actress can't avoid -- like the dialogue -- she's a wonder to watch. Her turn as Trinity in The Matrix was no fluke -- this is a tough, talented, charismatic actress who can bring even the most one-dimensional character to life.

And in Red Planet, that's really saying something. So let's say you're director Antony Hoffman, and you've got this beautiful, ultra-cool actress on your hands, and she's playing, in fact, the captain of the ship around which your whole shitty movie is based. Now while a wise man (again, James Cameron, before that whole Jessica Alba thing) would naturally give this girl all the screen time she deserves, Hoffman instead emphasizes the adventures of Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, and Benjamin Bratt frolicking though a planet that looks like it was shot through a thin layer of clotted blood. Yeah, yeah, I know, Mars is the red planet (the color not of fear, as the tagline proclaims, but of boredom), but what an ugly movie. Moss, on the other hand, is shot in full color. Tell me that's not symbolic.

The deservedly red-faced cast explores the Pitch Black set. Er, Mars.

The story of Red Planet is as follows: It's a few decades into the future, and Earth is dying. Disappearing fast are oxygen, food, screenwriting ability, imagination, acting talent... anyway, we decide to colonize Mars, and if you've seen Brian De Palma's Mission to Mars, and are still conscious, you probably know how that's going to go. In fact, if you've seen Mission to Mars, there's really no need for me to tell you any of the plot - the "terraforming" plan, the inevitable shuttle problems, the discovery that, wow, there is life on Mars after all! -- it's all there.

And for those of you who've seen Pitch Black, I scarcely need tell what Mars looked like. It's Coober Pedy, Australia, which somehow manages to look magnificent in a $20 million film and hideous in one that cost about four times more. The familiarity of the landscape will have many a Pitch Black fan longing for Riddick, and the addition of this new crew of stranded space travelers will have you longing with Riddick's big, sharp knife. In the beginning of the movie, I realized that the generation being portrayed by Val Kilmer and Tom Sizemore was essentially my own grown up, and boy, do we ever turn out boring. You think Britney Spears and the WB is bad, people? Just wait twenty years. TRL will look mighty fine after we've all been transformed into mind-numbing automatons. This is Generation Zzzzzz.

He's an astronaut going to Mars, but this guy's real aspiration in life is to become one of those Intel Bunnymen.

Then again, we did have the foresight to build large, cat-like robots that can be conveniently switched on and off from "evil" mode. Another saving grace for Carrie-Anne Moss is that, as her character alone is stuck inside the spaceship for the bulk of the film, she has very little interaction with Amee, who's about as intimidating -- even in the dreaded "evil" mode -- as one of those robotic yuppie dogs from Sony. Stupid Val & co., of course, fail to understand this, and thus she provides both the film's "conflict" (not only are they stranded on a mysterious planet, there's a flip-flopping evil female robot out to get them!) and "resolution" (the ending is so predictable, if I even minimally listed their essential dilemma, you would come to the conclusion way before Val Kilmer does.)

So, yes, another ghastly science fiction movie has come and gone. The fact that this is not even the worst of the year -- Mission to Mars, Supernova and Battlefield Earth were even more horrid -- is just too depressing to contemplate. So instead, I present to you, Carrie-Anne Moss. Let's all hope she recovers from Red Planet well, and I'll see you all at that Matrix sequel, when perhaps I won't feel a rising tide of nausea at the thought of enduring another genre film.

DROOL FACTOR: Val Kilmer is one of those technically attractive people who I just never got into. Sorry. Maybe it's the Schumacher Batman thing. Benjamin Bratt is hot, but he's wearing this dorky astronaut outfit and you can barely see his face. And that filtered lens is none too attractive on anyone.

GROSS-OUT FACTOR: Lots of little bugs -- that would be the life on Mars -- which look like they came straight from the planet Made For UPN.

STRONG CHICK FACTOR: Let's see -- there's "When Good Pet Robots Go Bad" and there's Carrie-Anne Moss. I'll leave it to you to decide.

-- Sarah Kendzior

Red Planet is currently playing.

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