a review of 火星大接触

This one was kind of a weird hybrid, balanced precariously between being a straightfaced 1950s UFO-hysteria picture and a postmodern '80s sendup of the same. I haven't seen the original, but now I'm curious to know exactly what Hooper kept and what he updated. The early scenes showing the warm, playful relationship between the kid protagonist and his parents (and the flip side thereof after they get body-snatched) seem like something that wouldn't have worked the same way in the 50s. So it was kind of disappointing when that dynamic is tossed aside for a sorta so-so chase movie with the kid and his school nurse (Karen Black, striking a slightly incongruent damsel-in-distress tone), that then turns into a more typically '50s soldiers vs. aliens movie after they enlist the help of some Marines. But as the action ramps up, the smaller scale stuff from the beginning of the movie gets lost in the shuffle. I really liked both Laraine Newman and Timothy Bottoms as the parents, and it was strange that they seemed so underutilized in the rest of the movie. Once we get onto the alien ship and see the Martians as designed by Stan Winston, the movie settles into being a fun Saturday matinee creature feature. But at the same time it felt like there were more interesting themes that were kind of left by the wayside.