Boring, contrived, and been-done.

Or, for those of you that want more details... The first 15 to 20 minutes are completely boring; a dreary necessity to set the background and premise that no doubt could havce been done a lot better. But after that comes a smattering of interesting stuff with the first crew on Mars, but then we hit the contrived part.

Now, this wouldn't be the first film to violate a few laws of physics for the sake of plot, but thois film had an advisor from NASA, so here there is no excuse. The scene is the resuce crew in space suits duing an EVA above Mars. One guy overshhots and floats out towards the planet so someone has to go after him. Enter a character burning fuel from her suit to get there and discovering he doesn't have enough fuel to reach there and back. Now, basic science class here, when in a zero-gravity environment you do not need to constantly burn fuel; just burn once to get up to velocity then drift (it's called momentum, folks), reach and retrieve your tareget, then turn around and do a second burn. No need to waste fuel and the vcharacter doesn't need to die.

But since he had to die then they just conveniently forgot this. That's what I mean by contrived.

Okay, now for the been-done part. Thge last half hour contains the only good stuff in the entire film, but there's almost nothing leading up to it. the crisis that happens on their way to Mars has nothinbg to do with anything else and the rest of the film has almost no build up of plot or mystery to what is finally discovered, thus leading to a ratrher lack-luster feeling when it finally does get there. Add to that the fact that it's a re-hash of 2001 and Close Encounters only not as masterfully done, and the verdict is that the ending isn't worth wading through the first two-thirds of the movie to get there.

Recommendation: spend your matinee money on a new book