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All Souls

Javier Marias

(0 Ratings) Rate It

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All Souls is a compelling black comedy of Oxford life by Javier Marias, whose highly-anticipated new...

Who am I, again?

Lenny Henry

9.0 (1 Ratings) Rate It

Book

In his long-awaited autobiography, Sir Lenny Henry tells the extraordinary story of his early years...

comedy biography lenny henry

Awix (3310 KP) rated Mars Attacks! (1996) in Movies

Jun 14, 2020

Mars Attacks! (1996)

1996 | Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi

7.2

(28 Ratings)

Movie Rating Watch

Lavishly camp black-comedy sci-fi extravaganza. Motivated largely by their innate gittishness, Martians attack the Earth (the clue is in the title), and various people naturally respond in their own personal ways. Much property damage and rather dated mid-90s CGI result.

One of those bizarre mutants that should never really have got past the script stage, let alone received a $70m budget: the release schedule inevitably resulted in it being hailed as a spoof of Independence Day (hard to spoof something that wasn't meant to be taken seriously in the first place), but this is much more a send-up of classic 50s sci-fi B-movies (various spot-on parodies), as well as being a startlingly subversive black comedy. You can also sense Burton trying to do his version of Dr Strangelove, with Nicholson in a multiple role, but it doesn't have anything like the same sharpness or impact. A bit patchy overall - some laugh-out-loud moments and game performances, but also a lot of dead wood and characters and jokes that just don't work. On the whole, though, the fact that films like this still get made suggests hope is not yet lost for the world.