Destination Earth

Destination Earth (1956)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Poorly done animation film has a martian from Mars being sent to Earth by his leader to try and find out why life in the United States is so wonderful. It turns out the secret is petroleum. This is one of those propaganda shorts from the 50s that was made to show students in school and it's easy to see why there was so many juvenile delinquents like we saw in films like REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. Yes, I think it's fair to say that a lot of the problems with teens came from being forced to watch trash like this. I'll admit that I love watching some of these "safety" or "message" films from back in the day but this one here is so deadly dull that its 13-minute running time seems to drag on longer than ROOTS. The entire film looks extremely cheap and poor with everything from the backgrounds to the actual characters looking rushed and poorly produced. The lead martian isn't a very entertaining character so going on his journey with him simply wasn't that much fun. The entire propaganda piece on petroleum is just downright boring and sadly it never gets bad enough to where you could laugh at it. I can't imagine anyone making this thing and actually thinking kids would be remotely interesting in anything they're being told. A real dud all around.