John Carter of Meh

John Carter (2012) What a mess.  I read the books as a teenager.  Oh, those Frank Frazetta covers.  They're a wonderful piece of adventure from that time (Edgar Rice Burroughs published the first book "A Princess of Mars" in 1917.  The last book in the series was published posthumously in 1964).  The problem is that the movie version never quite decides how it wants to play the rather campy style of that day.

The movie has a long and twisted history.  Folks have wanted to make it dating back as far as the 1930's when animator Bob Clampett (Looney Tunes at Warner Brothers and Beany and Cecil for TV) talked with the author about an animated version.  In 2009 there was a direct to DVD version starring Antonio Sabato Jr and Tracy Lords (!) as Carter and Dejah Thoris.  A handful of directors have been connected with this big screen version over the years and both Paramount and Disney held the rights.  Mario Kassar, Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau all signed on for the project then left.  In the end Disney turned to Andrew Stanton.  His claim to fame was directing both "Finding Nemo" and "Wall-E" for Pixar.  While I enjoyed both of those movie immensely both he and the writers (Stanton, Michael Chabon and Mark Andrews) show that they have no idea where to go with the story.  They can't seem to decide if this is a serious science fiction move, an Indiana Jones type serial homage or a kids science fiction film.  Instead we get the usual bloated CGI dump to try and make up for it.  No time is given to establishing the world in which the story takes place, making any sense of the story line or much in the way character relationships.  When you add in a rather undistinguished cast (who does nothing to change their status as such) you end up with a mess.

There are a few good moments, a couple neat visuals.  But way too few.

Muddled.  Slow.  Confused.  Lacking in any engaging characters.  The hope was this would launch a new franchise and there would be two sequels.  Therein may lay the problem.  If they'd spent more time making THIS one a good movie maybe they'd have a chance to make a couple more.  Instead they spent an enormous amount of money that they have virtually no chance of ever making back.  Which means that those wonderful stories of Barsoom may never come to the screen.

Reason enough to dislike this movie.

Rating - ** Not Impressed