Rich the Dog’s blog

Mars liking be a good off Hollywood’s tours itinerary for some time to come after, earliest, “Mission to Mars” and now this second lousy imagine of the year embark on that most speculated-about Human neighbor. As dull and arid as a hike through the walk out on, which is essentially what the film documents, “Red Planet” purports to be the most “realistic” account of an interplanetary journey ever depart onscreen, but that’s no excuse for its staggering want of dramatic disturbance and story excitement. While the $111 million in worldwide B.O. accumulated by “Mission to Mars” suggests that this sort of project can attract a pass out of commercial supporter based on the subdue subject alone, lukewarm word-of-mouth should send this Warner Bros. salvation into a tailspin shortly after launch.

Ludicrous as it was, “Mission to Mars” had style to burn compared to “Red Planet,” which is ploddingly prosaic and only commands viewer attention with sporadically nifty special effects, such as a space capsule’s bounce landing on the rocky mountain Martian surface and the menacing antics of a robot dog, and the spectacular landscapes provided by Wadi Rum in Jordan (familiar from “Lawrence of Arabia”) and Coober Pedy in the Australian Outback.

Otherwise, there’s astonishingly little going on in this tale of six astronauts sent to Mars in 2050 to — what else? — save the human race from eco-suicide. All the frogs have died, which finally signals Earthlings that they’ve trashed the environment once and for all and will have to move to Mars. Unfortunately, the Mars Terraforming Project, an unmanned undertaking to grow oxygen-producing algae on the supposedly lifeless planet, has gone awry, so a team is sent to rectify the situation.

Crew consists of Bowman (Carrie-Anne Moss), the ultra-competent mission commander; Gallagher (Val Kilmer), flight engineer and Bowman’s soul mate; Burchenal (Tom Sizemore), lead scientist; Santen (Benjamin Bratt), co-pilot and resident tough guy; Pettengil (Simon Baker), the very young agricultural specialist; and Chantilas (Terence Stamp), an aging space cadet who’s still looking for signs of God up in the heavens after many journeys into the beyond.

The six-month trip to Mars is dispatched with merciful economy, but still lasts long enough to make clear that the filmmakers haven’t bothered to re-imagine the future in any interesting ways: The spacecraft interior design remains rooted in the look established by “2001: A Space Odyssey” 32 years ago, while the dialogue and musical tastes precisely express turn-of-the-millennium styles. Worse, first-time director Antony Hoffman, a South African-born commercials helmer from the Propaganda stable, displays a ponderous tendency to mount dialogue sequences by simply cross-cutting between medium close-ups and keeping the camera on whatever character is doing the talking.

The arrival on Mars truly is arresting. With Bowman remaining in orbit (and kept abreast of developments by a conveniently exposition-handling computer voice), the five men become the first humans on Mars when their landing capsule, which is surrounded by airbag-like balloons, violently bounces upon the inhospitable surface until finally rolling to a stop. As the group sets out on foot for a prebuilt habitat supplied with more than two years’ worth of air and water, Chantilas immediately bows out, no doubt hoping for a spiritual epiphany before his own oxygen supply runs out.

In short order, the prickly Santen is bumped off a cliff, leaving just three Martian wayfarers. In most other sci-fi movies of this type, two significant characters removed from the action so early, and in manners where their deaths are not actually seen, would stand a good chance of turning up later on, to wreak mischief as often as not. But the script by Chuck Pfarrer (”The Jackal”) and Jonathan Lemkin (”The Devil’s Advocate”) seems dedicated to eliminating all elements of surprise and suspense, even as it sets up situations rife with potential dread.

For presumably carefully selected professionals on a joint mission of overweening cosmic importance, this bunch is a motley crew with a pronounced lack of cohesion and camaraderie; given the shared jeopardy and imminent death they face at any moment, they’re strangely at each others’ throats much of the time. When Pettengil commits an act of treachery, he runs afoul of the mad dog AMEE, the design of which reps one of the few elements here that will set genre fans talking; made of gleaming pistons and imaginatively moving parts, this ambiguous creature is a fabulous futuristic toy, capable of good and evil, although it enlivens the proceedings only occasionally.

And then there were two, Gallagher and Burchenal, who in the final going are threatened by some bugs that momentarily suggest that we’re entering “Alien” or even “Starship Troopers” territory. But no such luck, as the filmmakers once again decide against quickening the now-somnolent viewers’ pulses by concentrating on a predictable escape and trying to play entirely undeveloped and unearned emotional notes.

Although the picture reportedly contains more than 900 effects shots, it does boast a more “real” — that is, nondigital — look than many other recent effects-driven films. The “Martian” landscapes, drenched in heavy colored filters by lenser Peter Suschitzky, are striking to behold, and the visual and special effects are so consistently convincing that they almost become routine. Technically, the film cannot be faulted; if only that held in the creative area as well.

Constrained in space suits throughout, the thesps have little to do but look stressed and declaim functional dialogue. Moss does a solo act in her orbital spacecraft throughout, while Kilmer’s hair looks to become increasingly blond as the pic progresses — must be those ultraviolet rays.