Tag Archive

Director: Juan Antin
Release Date: October 3, 2002
Rating: ★★★
Review:

‘Mercano el Marciano’ is a curious feature film from Argentine about an ugly little Martian who gets stranded in the evil city of Buenos Aires, where he ends up living in the sewer.

Here he builds a virtual Mars to play in for himself on the internet, but soon it is discovered and exploited by businessmen. Together with a nerdy boy and a trio of alternatives Mercano takes revenge. This leads to a silly musical finale.

The film uses original designs and is nicely animated. Unfortunately, it is also hampered by slow timing, poor gags, graphic violence, ugly colors and bad sound design. The result is an original, yet mediocre film, which is not too surprising, when one considers the film was made with a budget of only $250,000 (for comparison: a contemporary Hollywood production like ‘Monsters, Inc’ cost $115 million).

‘Mercano el Marciano’ seems to be an early example of an international movement in animation film, which favors urban settings, violence and rather adult material (e.g. ‘The District!’ (2004)  from Hungary, and ‘George the Hedgehog’ (2011) from Poland).

Watch ‘Mercano el Marciano’ yourself and tell me what you think: