For the second time in five months, I've seen aliens invade the Earth and blow Washington to smithereens. With INDEPENDENCE DAY and now MARS ATTACKS! it's starting to become routine.

Both movies have their roots in dozens of bad flying saucer and disaster movies from the 50s through the 70s. But where ID4 served up the old formula and the stale cheese without a blink of self-consciousness, MARS ATTACKS! spoofs them with high camp and dark humor. Unfortunately, the fact that MARS ATTACKS! is a parody of a lot of bad movies doesn't make it a good movie.

My biggest problem with MARS ATTACKS! is the huge amount of time the film takes to set up characters and situations that come to naught when the Martians turn hostile. Maybe producer-director, Tim Burton, was trying to demonstrate how pointless disaster movie setup is. But why waste so much film on such an obvious point? The setup portion was full of camp and had a few good lines, but it failed to really make me laugh.

Once the Martian invasion goes into full swing, the move *is* wickedly fun. The Martians come to Earth equipped with voices like ducks, space suits, death rays and a sick sense of humor. For instance, a flying saucer zaps the Washington Monument while a pack of cub scouts stand nearby. As the scouts flee in the direction opposite the toppling monument, the saucer catches and nudges it back at them. Unfortunately, after half an hour, the "bwweeuubwweeuubwweeuu" of laser rifles got on my nerves and the sight of green-charred corpses and exploding alien heads got to my stomach. There's only so much of that Burton humor I can take.

I will give Burton credit for his usual attention to detail. In MARS ATTACKS! he replicates shots from DR. STRANGELOVE and THIS ISLAND EARTH. He pokes fun at the New York newspapers -- the Times headline reads "Extraterrestrial Life Confirmed;" the Daily News reads "MARTIANS!" And both of the main sets the President inhabits includes a design feature evoking a spider web. I know he's a good director. I simply wish he had brought us to the full scale attack more quickly and kept us there more palatably.

If I was wrong for expecting consistency from INDEPENDENCE DAY, I should be jailed for expecting it from MARS ATTACKS! Why do the aliens bother meeting with the humans? Why don't they come in shooting like in INDEPENDENCE DAY? Did they turn hostile because of a screw up with the translation devices or were their intentions always evil? Why did the US counter the saucer attack with ground-based units only? Was the entire Air Force on leave? I'm ashamed of even thinking of these questions; they clearly aren't meant to be answered.

I could moan about loose plot threads, but it's clear the threads were never meant to tie neatly together. Situations develop for small payoffs. Take this setup for example: One character chases down her sons who are playing hooky at a video arcade. The payoff comes when the kids are on a class trip to the White House and they use their video game skills to save the President. Obvious, predictable, like the rest of the movie _and_ the its precedents.

Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman. With the exception of Short, Fox and Jones a cast like this could easily be behind the blockbuster drama of the season. With their inclusion... it's clearly a comedy.

How does this cast do? Well, I don't know what Hillary Clinton is doing in the White House, because Glenn Close *is* the perfect First Lady. The last Tim Burton feature with Jack Nicholson was BATMAN. Jack Nicholson as the Joker; Jack Nicholson as the President... Except for the homicidal mania, there's not a lot of difference. I guess that's why Nicholson was also given the throwaway role of Art Land, a Vegas hotel owner and thug. Annette Bening plays Art's crystal-gazing wife; this is the first time I've found her bearable since THE GRIFTERS. Michael J. Fox as a news anchor? Forget it! The hair may be great but his voice and enunciation are like nails on a chalkboard. Natalie Portman (who was the young girl Mathilda in THE PROFESSIONAL [aka LEON]) plays the President's appropriately gloomy teenage daughter, with apparently little effort. Also with little effort, Pierce Brosnan turns in the campiest performance of all as the President's science advisor. He even beats out Rod Steiger impersonating George C. Scott's General from DR. STRANGELOVE.

But you shouldn't sweat the performances. You never come to care about any of the characters, which is just as well since nearly all of them get disintegrated.

I complained about SPACE JAM being based on a TV commercial. Do you know what MARS ATTACKS! is based on? Get this: Bubble gum cards! Bubble gum cards?! The opening credits include "Based on MARS ATTACKS! Property of the Topps Company." Topps distributed the "Mars Attacks!" cards in 1962, pulling them after only a few months because they were considered too "intense" at the time. I forsee a new series of "Mars Attacks!" cards -- and lunch boxes and action figures and maybe even a hockey team -- invading in the near future.

I imagine many people will forgive the movie its flaws based on the brilliant half hour of the full invasion. I don't know yet if I will. I'm not sorry I saw MARS ATTACKS! but I am glad I didn't pay $8.00 to see it.

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