Tim Burton gets thoroughly self-indulgent, with two or three dozen mixed celebrities along for the ride. Mars Attacks! is wacky, carefree and impulsive, with a pitch-black sense of humor and a penchant for cutting off primary characters' heads (or turning them into glowing skeletons, as it were) well before their stories have climaxed.

The CGI effects are glaringly bad, even by mid-90s standards, but that may have been the point. Burton, fresh off his Ed Wood biopic, clearly wasn't ready to wave goodbye to the sub-genre of the chintzy '50s sci-fi meatball, and so he composed this tidy, self-aware little love letter to further scratch that itch.

It's still appropriately satirical and funny, in the director's typical far-off-the-beaten-path style, though the gags and puns don't benefit from multiple viewings... even if they're spread out over the course of several years. Everyone involved, both on-screen and off, radiates with an authentic sense of self-amusement, and that's enough to make things work when they really, honestly, have no business doing so.