I had been warned by other reviews that Mars Attacks! wasn’t as funny as it needed to be. And, sure enough, even with my lowered expectations, it fell short with the laughs. I wonder if Tim Burton wasn’t overly influenced by his research into Ed Wood. (The Ed Wood movies actually were bad, not so-bad-they’re-funny.)
Mars Attacks! is not so much a spoof of ‘B’ science fiction films as it is an homage to them. But those ‘B’ films were usually bad, and this homage to them suffers for the same reasons.
The movie’s redeeming factors are Jack Nicholson as the Las Vegas entrepreneur, the Martians’ human experiments, and the novelty of seeing a ‘B’ movie given such a lavish budget.