A highly entertaining slacker comedy that utilises rotoscope animation over live action footage to aesthetically pleasurable effect, Geoff Marslett’s Mars (2010) is the kind of film you can’t help falling a little in love with. Gently subversive in offhand, innocuous ways, it has fun parodying aspects of sci-fi and pop culture whilst never losing sight of a rudimentary need to build a foundation of character.
Set predominantly in 2015, Mars leisurely charts the first manned mission to the red planet, a decade after a NASA robotic lander malfunctioned. Three participants will be aboard the craft lowly engineer and former spacewalker Charlie Browsville (Mark Duplass), lead scientist Dr. Casey Cook (Zoe Simpson), and Hank Morrison (Paul Gordon), a wealthy but depressive millionaire who is actually the driving force behind this intergalactic venture.
Marslett’s screenplay is deceptively good and the epitome of unassuming. Initially it appears to be constructed of loosely strung together vignettes as Charlie self-deprecatingly queries his relevance to the mission. But a plethora of funny one-liners and sight gags consolidates the story’s effectiveness. Gradually it builds into a more detailed narrative from which a genuine camaraderie between Charlie and Casey emerges.
Betwixt the mission’s various beats, Marslett offers satirical barbs at the boobs back home via a couple of MTV-lite reporters attempting to lackadaisically inform their hipster audience of developments. Charlie even breaks free of his mold of extraneousness, becoming a hero as the craft’s solar ray is damaged requiring intuitive evasive action. But all these plot turns are imparted without any concessions to traditional narrative devices, the slacker aesthetic is gleefully adhered to by Marslett whose modest but blissfully off-kilter film builds a persuasive momentum.
Any film that casts country musician and crime fiction writer Kinky Friedman as President of the United States wins kudos in my books. This subversive bit of casting is a fitting summation of Marslett’s modus operandi he doesn’t take anything too seriously and the effect is a winningly low-fi comedy tinged with romance that will broadly appeal to audiences willing to embrace the director’s offbeat sensibilities and idiosyncratic vision.
I say:
One of those understated, almost brilliant small scale projects that can rightly be called a cinematic ‘gem’.
See it for:
Marslett’s unique approach and the winning performances by Duplass and Simpson.
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