The bad news is that NASA has to effect a high risk rescue of an astronaut from Mars. The even worse news is that this process will take dang near two and a half hours real time and it involves enduring Matt Damon. This has got to be one of the most tedious movies of the 21st century as Damon, playing space cadet Mark Watney, mugs and cracks wise in a seemingly interminable proto-propaganda bureaucracy department feature. Damon is developing a specialty for quasi-governmental roles what with the Bourne stuff, Confessions of a D M, Saving Private Ryan, Syriana, The Good Shepherd et al. The premise of an outer space rescue that takes this long means it can only end successfully,thus quashing the only sliver of suspense that may have existed in the first place. In contrast to Damon for the most part, Ridley Scott at least used to regularly make good movies, but has now apparently joined the pasteurized cheese by-product posse. The disco soundtrack is roundly criticized by the cast throughout the flick yet that's all you're gonna get so apparently the producers wanted to have their cake and eat it too. Jeff Daniels reads his lines authoritatively while Kristen Wiig is little more than a statue, propped up next to the lectern, implying that women are not quite ready to issue NASA p/r convincingly. High production values, solid special effects ( even if technically inaccurate ) and an exciting final ten minutes or so can't keep this slab of cosmic detritus from deserving to be lost in space.