I didn't expect much, and that is perhaps the only aspect of the movie that did not disappoint.

You ever get the feeling from a movie or a series that given the plot - that the setting could be just about anything? This is exactly the case with this movie. It could have been set on an island, on a remote mountain top, in a desert right here on Earth... literally anywhere. There is so little Mars- specific in the plot (or rather focused on the fact that this is another planet... something that should have been much more capitalised on) that the whole survival thing could just as well have been about a guy stuck in a service elevator in an abandoned hotel after his coworkers accidentally shut off the power for the whole building on their way out. As for the rest of the plot-specific action going on... meh. A lot of "video-diary" stuff, Matt finds poop to grow potatoes, Matt does something to survive and something happens because of that, Matt tries to keep himself busy with some other nonsense, Matt talks to himself because he's so alone and a bit nuts because of that, Matt does some McGuyver stuff to survive/communicate/whatever... that's just it there is so little excitement about the plot it basically revolves about mundane routine with some halfway-decent slapstick humor every once in a while there is not much to tell. I was almost expecting some serious plot twist/aliens whatever to come crashing in and turn it all around but that never happened. As far as the rest of the characters go some of them over-played and over-exxagerated their roles, while the rest were just stereotypical characters that needed no character building and didn't get any either. The only thing that kinda spiced up the drama was the rescue effort, but again by that time the movie was already as blant as one of those bad dished Gordon Ramsey gets so disgusted with on his show. I don't know what this movie was supposed to be exactly, an experiment with how boring a one- man survival thing can become or something like that, but it didn't even get CLOSE to what a good movie "cast away" is. My 2 cents worth of advice just forget about this movie and watch Cast Away.