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The movie is a hybrid of the 1970s all-star disaster movie, with a huge cast spread out over multiple storylines, while also a fond nostalgia trip for 1950s flying saucer movies. Burton's love for both these genres is strong, and he aims for camp, and most of his cast is in on the joke. Many of them chew scenery (Annette Bening, Rod Steiger, and one of Jack Nicholson's roles), while mild and shaggy Lukas Haas seems to be in a different movie from everyone else. Does his energy dial only go from zero to three?
The mild political satire of preening generals, a narcissistic president, and a smarmy, horny press secretary, is a poor fit for Burton and the movie overall.
I read that Burton wanted the Martians to be rendered with old-school stop-motion, like his favorite 1950s monster movies (and The Nightmare Before Christmas), but they were made with CGI by ILM. I don't remember if the effects were impressive in 1996, but in 2024, the Martians look good, and all the laser effects and people-getting-vaporized effects look awful... but only 28 years later does that kitsch almost help the entertainment value.
The presence of so many "name" actors - and how briefly they appear - reveals perhaps how much the movie was cut down to 106 minutes, or perhaps only how hot Burton was in the late 1990s:
- Danny DeVito, billed above the title, has a nameless, pointless, cameo with six lines and 90 seconds of screen time. Seems like he got along well with Burton in Batman Returns and signed on?
- Christina Applegate, at the tail end of her Married With Children tenure, has maybe one line, and she barely faces the camera for most of her screen time.
- Jack Black, four years before his breakthrough in High Fidelity, must have had a larger role at some point, because there's no point to his character in the first place.
(A special sneak-preview screening (not free) at the Maine Mall cinema.)