“My name, is JOHN CARTER”

I’ve decided not to bury the lead in this review, so I’ll say that without a doubt, Disney’s “John Carter” is why we go to the movies.

We get together with friends and family, want to have a fun night out, and we want to be entertained.  “John Carter” did for me what “Avatar” did not.  It allowed me to have fun while still being engaged in a classic story.  And when I say “classic”, I mean it in every sense of the word.  The series of stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs which the film is based on started over 100 years ago.  The same year the Titanic sank, the fictional John Carter walked on Mars.

The film opens as the writer Burroughs played by Daryl Sabara in the film, comes to visit his uncle John Carter played by Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) at his estate only to be told, that he has died.  Burroughs is given along with the entire estate a journal left by Carter that tells of his adventures on the planet Mars.  How he gets there and how he can breathe is not as important as what happens when he arrives.  Being in an atmosphere one-tenth our gravity, he’s as strong as ten men, and he can leap tall buildings in a single bound like that other popular alien.  He also quickly meets up with the Martians who inhabit the planet and though many familiar situations becomes a respected warrior or Jeddak, as they are known on Mars or Barsoom in the film.

The script if filled with characters, places, and names of gods all strange and a little hard to keep track of. However the best part is you don’t need to.  It’s so much fun to see the whole adventure play out in one action set piece after another, and all just as exciting.  This could have easily been a horrible retread of a movie filled with things we had all seen before, the reluctant hero, a Princess (Lynn Collins), the elder warrior (voiced by Willem Defoe) and a planet that needs to be saved, the difference is the way it is achieved feels fresh as it plays with stereotypes that are common in other-world adventures while staying true to the essence of the story.  If I try to explain more of the plot, you will no doubt see similarities between “John Carter” and “Avatar”, “Star Wars”, “Dances with Wolves”, “The Princess Bride” but like I said, none of those stories or their creators were around  100 years ago.  This is one of the original’s that those others borrowed from, all of it put together brilliantly by the writers of the film: Michael Chabon, Mark Andrews and witer/director Andrew Stanton (Wall-E).  Like fellow Pixar alumni Brad Bird (The Incredibles) before him, with last year’s “Mission: Impossible -Ghost Protocol” Stanton shows that he can engage in live action as well as he can in animated films.

With ticket prices and concessions being what they are, spending a small fortune at the movies is one we all think twice about now.  We hear something is good, we say, “I’ll rent it when it comes out on DVD”.  This is, as they say “worth the price of admission”.  You want sci-fi action?  It’s here.  You want fairy tale adventure?  It’s here.  You want a great time at the movies again?  Go see “John Carter.”

--Robert L. Castillo