Having just finished watching this movie, I have mixed emotions about it. There are good things about it. The story is an interesting one; of course most of us have heard conspiracy theories about how the U.S. government faked the manned moon landings. This 1978 movie is based on a similar premise, except that it's a manned mission to Mars that's being faked instead.

I found the acting all right for the most part, if not exceptional. Eliot Gould's character is entertaining. James Brolin and Sam Waterston do well. O.J. Simpson... well, you can't have it all.

There are quite a few moments, however, that totally jerked me back from my "escape from reality." O.J.'s performance being one of them. I don't have a whole lot to say about it; just that his one Big Scene totally felt like something out of Looney Tunes and I think I actually giggled during it.

There are some scenes that work very effectively (such as when Brolin forces himself to eat a raw snake to stay alive, or certain comedic moments involving Gould), but there are too many unrealistic, predictable moments. I once again found myself laughing when Sam Waterston got captured by the bad guys, and it wasn't the punchline to his joke. (Picture this: Sam is climbing a huge cliff face, clawing his way to the top. As he's doing this, he has plenty of breath to spare to tell himself a long, drawn out joke. I've heard the joke before, and knowing what the punchline is, I can predict that when he reaches the top of the cliff, he's going to die. And he does.)

I'm not going to say anything about the ridiculousness of a long air chase involving two military helicopters armed with machine guns pursuing a crop-duster to which a dehydrated James Brolin, after two days of crawling through the desert, is clinging onto for dear life, nor the preposterous ending to said chase involving (how did I know?) Telly Savalas making not one, but BOTH of said military helicopters crash into a cliff by blinding them with his crop-dust, after which he delivers the witty parting invective, "Perverts!"

No, instead, I'd like to talk about how lame the film's ending turned out to be. This should be Brolin's big moment. He's the last survivor of the faked Mars mission. Both of his fellow crew members have been murdered to cover it up! He's showing up at his own memorial service to blow the whole thing wide open on national TV in front of the President, his own wife and kids who think he's dead, and the man responsible for the whole thing. Do they film that climactic moment? Nope. The movie ends with a crowd of people starting to turn around with vaguely suprised looks on their faces and a S L O W M O T I O N shot of James Brolin and Eliot Gould running towards the crowd. And they're playing a sappy love theme. And the slow motion shot gets slower and slower and slower until you can actually see the individual frames of the movie one by one until it stops, frozen on Brolin's happy face. And that's how it ends. That's how it ends, folks. No, seriously. It ends right there. Goes into the credits. Fin.

I can't decide how to classify this one. Parts of it are bad enough to sit and lampoon with your friends, Sinbad-style, but it has some genuinely good material in it as well. Is it worth your time? I don't know. You'll have to make that decision for yourself. Hopefully this review will help you do that.