Review Detail

Mars Attacks! was a movie I remember enjoying, and have been meaning to revisit - my DVD was getting dusty on the shelf, and Reave's fanedit was a good excuse to watch the film again.

As far as narrative and editing choices, Reave hit the mark pretty spot on. I get the idea of cutting side characters back to cameos, and that worked brilliantly. I would have probably excised more of the Art and Barbara Land scenes, though. Their screen time seemed to be in this awkward middle land - a bit too much for a cameo, but not enough to weave properly into the story. The only other minor complaint I had was that it seemed like the film moved too fast from the discovery of the aliens' weakness. One moment Richie and Grandma make the discovery, and the next, the military has integrated the speaker systems into their tanks. Something felt missing. Maybe it was just the loss of side plots that made it move fast. Those are pretty minor complaints though, and I don't want to focus on the negative. This was a REALLY fun watch, and Reave did a great job focusing the story

On the tech side, the cuts were invisible, the video was beautiful, and the sound was great. Again, I have two small complaints - this time about the audio. First, the sound was slightly off sync. It was a matter of milliseconds, so its was not really that distracting, but it was a bit off. I think at least one other person commented on this, so it wasn't just my system. Second, the scene where the spaceship crashes could use a bit of foley work. The music alone didn't carry it quite enough.

Anyway, awesome edit. highly recommended. Thanks Reave!