Really Surprised!

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

"Destination: Mars" is a DVD extra included on the disc for Criterion's "Robinson Crusoe on Mars". The point of the film is to try to explain how the original movie was based, in most cases, on what was considered factual or most likely back in the mid-1960s. So, when you laugh at the absurdity of the film today, you are asked to put it in context and understand that it was good for its time. I liked this aspect of the film, though some of the interviews towards the end sounded a bit flaky with their odd assumptions about Mars. Uneven but worth seeing if you watch the feature--especially as it does shed some light on the reasoning behind much of the film's science.