Ironically, that sense of mystery and wonder is absent in Mission to Mars, a highly touted space adventure from the Disney studios. From watching this film, you'd think a manned expedition to the red planet would be about as exciting as watching grass grow.

Don Cheadle plays an astronaut sent to land on the surface of Mars. His crew gets caught in a sandstorm, killing them all. Another team is selected to go on a rescue mission. The members include a husband and wife team (Tim Robbins and Connie Nielsen) and an veteran astronaut (Gary Sinise) who was forced into retirement after becoming emotionally distraught over the death of his wife. He's the only one capable of heading the mission (his wife was an expert on Mars and he knows her theories forward and backward).

Without revealing too much, the team lands on Mars and - as the film's tagline says - "discovers the origin of life on earth." In other words, get ready for sticky philosophical sentimentality.

American astronauts plant a flag during their Mission to Mars

Mission to Mars was directed by Brian DePalma, a filmmaker whose career has been dogged by accusations that he merely rips off better filmmakers, most notably Alfred Hitchcock (DePalma's Dressed to Kill in particular was a complete retread of Psycho). I have always agreed with the accusation, and this time DePalma seems to be cribbing from Stanley Kubrick and James Cameron. There are echoes of 2001 (a rotating space wheel, a deliberately laid-back pace) and the 3-hour director's cut of Cameron's The Abyss (travelers discover a hidden lair where alien beings answer the great mysteries of life). There's even some resemblance to Robert Zemeckis's Contact (the aforementioned sticky philosophical sentimentality). Watching Mission to Mars is like watching a dull composite of better movies you've already seen.

A movie about astronauts on Mars should have a lot of inherent excitement and awe. Despite some superb special effects, there's no enthusiasm for the subject here. Rather than capitalizing on the fascination Mars holds, the movie goes for predictable melodrama (i.e. lots of scenes in which Sinise mourns his wife). The human characters are nowhere near as interesting as Mars itself; why would we want to spend too much time watching the characters' personal dramas when we could be seeing how they are affected by setting foot on such a wondrous planet?

As for the origin of life on earth...well, somehow the resolution seems less than enthralling. The scene in which everything is explained is hokey. You can feel the filmmakers grasping for deep meaning, but they're stuck in the shallow end of the galaxy.

Only a few moments hold any interest: the sandstorm, a space walk, the discovery of the alien lair. The movie also has an intriguing idea about the infamous "face" on Mars, and the special effects are impressive on the big screen. More often than not, though, I was bored by Mission to Mars. A whole lot of money was obviously spent on a film that is considerably less interesting than a trip to the planetarium.

( out of four)

Mission to Mars is rated PG for language and brief violence. The running time is 1 hour and 53 minutes.