John Carter: movie review (+trailer)

( PG-13 ) ( Monitor Movie Guide )

Despite a good team behind the scenes, 'John Carter' only reminds audience members of the better movies it was inspired by.

|
Disney/AP
'John Carter' is fun-free despite being directed by Pixar writer and director Andrew Stanton.

I don’t usually bring up a film’s budget in a review, but the reported $250 million price tag for “John Carter” gives one pause. I suppose one could argue that masterpieces have no price. Then again, “John Carter” is no masterpiece.

Based on sci-fi books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, primarily his “Princess From Mars,” the film is about a former Confederate soldier, Taylor Kitsch’s John Carter, who ends up on Mars and ends up embroiled in a galactic war that looks like a cross between “The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Fall of the Roman Empire.” There are nine-foot-tall, tusked, four-armed creatures that bear a disconcerting resemblance to Jar Jar Binks. There are also a slew of human or humanoid meanies, some of them shape-shifting, and, for the love interest, the warrior princess Dejah (Lynn Collins), whose blue eyes make Paul Newman’s seem lackluster. It all plays tolerably well (in 2D, which is how I saw it, or, presumably, in 3D IMAX), but it keeps harkening back to much better movies, especially “Planet of the Apes” and, well, “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Its director is Pixar whiz Andrew Stanton, who directed “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E,” and the script lists the wonderful novelist Michael Chabon as one of its contributors. So why is everything so thuddingly fun-free? Maybe that budget scared people off. Grade: C+ (Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action.)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to John Carter: movie review (+trailer)
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2012/0308/John-Carter-movie-review-trailer
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe