Jessica Chastain is also a perfect compliment to Damon's presence, providing a cosmic yin yang chemistry. Damon doesn't seem to take the role too seriously and this is a good thing, however is performance is undeniably believable. Matt Damon's brilliant performance grounds the film throughout and is constant, committed and extremely well executed. It's a genuinely brilliant story, however.
The Martian is not a comedy, but nor is it a thriller.
The cheesy disco soundtrack helps fuel this slightly lighthearted feeling throughout and is also bolstered by the cameo of Kristen Wiig, mostly known for her dry and darkly comic roles and proves once again that she can lighten up the bleakest of films. As it turns out, The Martian's setting is perfect for Damon: in space, no one can hear you stick your foot in your mouth.Almost zany in its attempt to deliver a castaway story on Mars, its meandering tone and pace are refreshing in such a serious, heady genre and is probably the happiest film about space (are there really any happy films about space?), particularly being lost in space. He and Ridley Scott have made the most enjoyable science fiction movie in years, an all-smiles antidote for Gravity's one-sided intensity and Interstellar's alienating denseness. It's a shame that Damon has been suffering from extreme vomit-of-the-mouth syndrome lately, from insensitively shutting down Dear White People producer Effie Brown on Project Greenlight to this week's comments how about gay actors should stay in Hollywood’s large closet- The Martian ranks with Damon’s best work. Like how Tom Hanks was once able to make talking to a volleyball seem charming, Damon turns conversing with potatoes and NASA equipment into sincere comedy. Much of The Martian requires the solo Damon to speak directly into the camera for long stretches and bounce around in a bulky spacesuit on Scott’s vastly rendered Mars terrain, and he's endlessly watchable. The third, and most important, MVP is Matt Damon, who gives one of those quintessential "movie star" performances. Second, screenwriter Drew Goddard, who’s one of the game’s best genre manipulators (see: The Cabin in the Woods), makes The Martian’s hard science easily accessible-the actors energetically play with the textbook-friendly dialogue as if they’re discussing sex in a Judd Apatow movie. First, Scott's willingness to drop the coldness of his last few efforts lends the film a persistent cheeriness he's not above pushing a running joke about cheesy disco songs to its limit, even playing Gloria Gaynor’s so-on-the-nose-it's-kind-of-endearing "I Will Survive" over the end credits. The Martian succeeds primarily because of three people. Back home on Earth, meanwhile, NASA's top-ranking officials, including Jeff Daniels and Chiwetel Ejiofor, are working overtime to safely retrieve Watney and avoid a public relations hell-storm. Alone on Mars, Watney "sciences the shit" out of his predicament and, since he’s also a botanist, manages to stretch his minimal resources into multiple years' worth of sustenance. Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, an astronaut left behind by his fellow Mars explorers-led by Jessica Chastain-after a flying debris levels him during a storm. And it’s hugely successful on both fronts.īased on Andy Weir's originally self-published, and too dryly written, novel of the same name, The Martian is essentially Cast Away beyond the stars. Up-tempo to the point of being somewhat corny, Scott's latest intergalactic film is shamelessly designed to please crowds and complement popcorn. So The Martian's unabashed pleasantness is a welcome surprise. Twenty-four years after breaking through with his still terrifying sci-fi/horror classic Alien, Scott returned to the world of the Nostromo for 2013's Prometheus, an uneven prequel that’s too pretentious to be any real fun. The prospect of a new Ridley Scott space movie no longer seems foolproof.