SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Ted Christmas on Mars, the debut feature of Wayne Coyne and my beloved Flaming Lips, is just as psychotic, obtuse, and delightfully up its own ass as anyone familiar with the band might expect. The film is centered around a small human colony on Mars, its patrons just barely coping with existential despair in the face of vacuous space as Christmas approaches--of course. The medium offers mixed returns for the Lips: besides its obvious psychedelic opportunities, film allows Coyne and company to occasionally subvert cultural iconography and to deliver an endless barrage of vaginal imagery; the former visual tactic being arguably more artful. Film also means dialog, however, which isn't Coyne's strong suit: where his music often packs big ideas into few words, his sprawling drugisms have trouble supporting a narrative diegesis. If there's one thing that's truly excellent about the film, it's the trippy, operatic music--one wishes the Lips were approached for film scores more often. It is also buoyed by a few fun performances: guitarist Steven Drozd is charismatically subdued, and Mark DeGraffenried adds an essential sense of humor as the foul-mouthed Captain Icaria. I can't say how well this film will play to those uninitiated in the Flaming Lips' discography, but for those of us who are fans, there's a certain pleasure of recognition in seeing Wayne Coyne in green antennae inexplicably dropping out of space to don a Santa suit: it's completely unexpected, and that's just what we expect. -TK 9/21/10

Argemaluco The movie Christmas on Mars was a strange creative project from the group The Flaming Lips,whose music I quite enjoy; so I had a lot of curiosity how they were going to adapt their style to a film.The result is that,while I found this film moderately interesting,I also found it to be pretty disappointing.Christmas on Mars tries too hard to be a "cult film"...which is the main mistake from all the movies which try to be cult.I think that condition only comes when the film authentically deserves it (like,for example Donnie Darko or The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension).On the contrary,making a movie intentionally bizarre or eccentric reveals some dishonesty which plays against the movie,as we can see on Christmas on Mars.If I had to make a short summary of this movie,I would say it is a combination of Eraserhead,The American Astronaut,Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,Forbidden Zone,Dark Star and 2001.On my case,that combination resulted to be moderately interesting but not very satisfactory after all.I can give a slight recommendation to this film because it has some good elements (specially,its very creative visual aesthetic),but I certainly expected more from Christmas on Mars.

TheTeh This is exactly the sort of movie you'd expect the Flaming Lips to make. Trippy, bizarre, overindulgent, ridiculous, but all the while very enjoyable to watch if you're a fan of experimental movies. The film tells a barely understandable (at first) story about a group of depressed, disillusioned colonists on Mars who rediscover their humanity with the help of a silent martian and a sort of "virgin birth." The movie is a kind of a roller-coaster ride--at some points, it's very interesting, artistic, and beautiful to watch. The opening scene is fascinatingly bizarre, and there are a number of interesting (but horrifying!) hallucinations involving various awful things happening to babies. There's also a fair amount of the sort of ponderous, philosophical dialog you'd expect in a Flaming Lips movie. BUT there are also some problems with the movie--sometimes it seems too abstract, to the point where you have no idea what's going on. At other points, dreary, repetitive, awkwardly written and poorly acted dialog scenes nearly drag the movie to a standstill. I still recommend it though, because it's an interesting artistic experience, a bizarre treat for fans of the band, and because it does seem to have some sort of ultimate message about humanity.

Seamus2829 Okay. To try & sum this trippy little film up in (at least)one sentence: Take a jigger of Andre Tarkovsky's original Russian version of 'Solaris',mix in a dash of David Lynch's 'Eraserhead',fold in a pinch of '2001:A Space Oddyssey',add elements of John Carpenter's 'Dark Star',and just a tiny bit of 'Tetsuo:The Iron Man',shake well,pour into your cerebral cortex (with plenty of LSD),and Shazam, you have 'Christmas On Mars'. This is the absolute midnight cult film (if any cinemas had half a brain to screen midnight films,these days). This is the first feature film from the Oklahoma based rock band, the Flaming Lips. Wayne Coyne,who co writes the screenplay & co directs the film, also has a role as a space alien who never so much as speaks a word, but you somehow know exactly what he/it means. The film also features acting (?) performances by fellow Lips member,Steven Drozd as a freaked out astronaut,as well as other members of the band (and also Isaac Brock from Modest Mouse)in other roles. This film was shot over something like seven years, on a shoestring budget. Although there is no concert appearances by the band,the music & sound design was performed by the Flaming Lips (mostly a lot of deep space ambient sound). I especially admired the films visual look (which was filmed mostly in high contrast black & white with psychedelic colour bursts from time to time). This is the kind of film that will be a treat for some viewers (mostly Flaming Lips fans,who the band eternally thank at the film's conclusion), and a crashing bore to others (those who have no tolerance for something really different). The choice is yours. No MPAA rating here, but would easily snag an "R", due to course language, and some really surreal pseudo/quasi pornographic hallucination sequences. Leave the little one's home (who would probably be bored and/or confused out of their skulls,anyway).