Mars Attacks!(1996)

Good watch, could watch again, but it's hard to honestly recommend. This is one of those movies that is good because it is bad, whether or not that is done on purpose, for the purposes of parody. Otherwise it's just a good old jump in "The Way Back Machine" to see a litany of cameos or cheap parts by almost anyone who was famous in the mid-1990s. Though I do feel like most of the actors I liked were essentially…

Reviewed on February 23, 2021

**A film full of black humor, and for that very reason difficult to digest for many people.** Black humor is doomed to be understood by very few, and this film, which is drenched in black humor from beginning to end, paid the price, becoming a minor failure. I believe that, even today, it is one of the less well-appreciated films of director Tim Burton's career, who made films considerably worse than this one. The…

Reviewed on July 6, 2023

**_Tim Burton’s spoof of ’50s sci-fi flicks with an outstanding cast_** Shot in 1996 and released at the end of that year, Burton used the Mars Attacks trading cards from the ’60s as the template for his extraterrestrials. The film plays like the Mad magazine version of “Independence Day,” which beat this to the theaters by 5.5 months the same year. Yet Burton said he didn’t know anything about that movie and it…

Reviewed on October 21, 2025

**Score: 8/10 — A Gleefully Deranged, One-of-a-Kind Satirical Spectacle** *Mars Attacks!* is the cinematic equivalent of a sugar rush from a radioactive candy bar—bright, chaotic, and utterly unforgettable. It is a film that **goes places only Tim Burton would dare to take a movie**, blending 1950s B-movie kitsch with nuclear-grade satire, all delivered with a straight-faced, ghoulish glee that is uniquely his own.…

Reviewed on February 16, 2026