Passage to Mars

[A] misguided hybrid that makes tediously clear from the outset that [its] conceit just isn't working.

Danger doesn't quite translate into sustained drama here, in part because the reliance on voiceover distances us from the action.

Take "Ice Road Truckers," mix it with "The Martian" and blend in a book of verse, and you've got something that resembles "Passage to Mars," a beguiling documentary that's concerned as much with images as it is with information.

Unable to develop any of the team members as personalities or to evoke the supposed otherworldliness of its arctic setting, it becomes a testament to the fact that a sense of wonder doesn't mean jack without the talent or art needed to express it.

It's a thrill to see so careful a re-creation - and some actual footage - of Martian geography.

Jeauffre's blending of terrestrial and extraterrestrial imagery is hypnotizing and spectacular, but this story of survival feels too bloodless to appeal to the average viewer.

Essentially trite presentation of a facsimile space mission that never gets off the ground, in more ways than one.