John Carter is a fucking mess. Let me rephrase that: With all due respect to Andrew Stanton, writer and director of Pixar gems such as Finding Nemo and WALL*E, John Carter is a fucking mess.

Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights) flatlines as the title character, a military captain in 1881 who somehow gets transported to Mars to battle aliens. (Think there couldn’t be a comedy/adventure film worse than Cowboys & Aliens? You’d be wrong.) But Mars is known as Barsoom, and its territories and its aliens are known by a whole bunch of hard-to-grasp names, and the only thing that’s clear is that Carter can leap like Superman and the aliens look like green, four-armed Jar Jar Binkses. And their leader thinks Carter’s name is Virginia, which is actually where he’s from! It’s not hilarious.

There are also weird, pudgy alien babies whose purpose is unclear, and an alien dog for further comic nonrelief. And a princess—-there’s gotta be a princess—-named Dejah (Lynn Collins), who wants out of her arranged marriage to…some evil guy. So John fights everyone, with no obvious indication of who’s bad, who’s good, if there’s a civil war going on, or what. Too many unfamiliar names and a murky deluge of a plot will do that to a movie. While watching it, you long for clarity and excitement of The Phantom Menace. (Star Wars was clearly influenced by the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel on which this film is based.)

And audiences willing to shell out extra bucks get the privilege of seeing this all in dim and completely unimpressive 3D! John Carter was converted, not shot in 3D, and it shows. Try taking off those damn glasses. Only a handful of scenes actually have more than two dimensions; the rest are blissfully bright and clear. So: especial waste of money.

Throughout the who-knows-what’s-going-on story is an intrusive score that telegraphs every mood you’re supposed to feel. Wonder! Adventure! Menace! Romance! The music is by Michael Giacchino, who magnificently scored Up, so this overkill is a puzzler. Also head-scratching: that this script was co-written by Stanton and Michael Chabon. (And Mark Andrews, but his track record is unproven.) The clearest dialogue that’s spoken is a line by Kitsch, who at one point mumbles, “Good God, I’m on Mars.” Yes, you are. You don’t know what you’re doing there, neither do we, and chances are sleep will grip us before the movie will.