Mars Needs Moms (2011)

Mars Needs Moms © Walt Disney Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

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Director:	Simon Wells
Writers:	Simon Wells, Wendy Wells
Cast:	Seth Green, Dan Fogler, Elisabeth Harnois, Mindy Sterling, Kevin Cahoon, Joan Cusack
Released:	Friday, March 11, 2011
Length:	88 minutes
Studio:	Walt Disney Pictures
Genre:	Family
Rating:	Some material may not be suitable for children.

Synopsis

Take out the trash, eat your broccoli—who needs moms, anyway? Nine-year-old Milo (Seth Green) finds out just how much he needs his mom (Joan Cusack) when she’s nabbed by Martians who plan to steal her mom-ness for their own young. Produced by the team behind “Disney’s A Christmas Carol” and “The Polar Express,” “Mars Needs Moms” showcases Milo’s quest to save his mom—a wild adventure in Disney Digital 3D™ and IMAX® 3D that involves stowing away on a spaceship, navigating an elaborate, multi-level planet and taking on the alien nation and their leader (Mindy Sterling). With the help of a tech-savvy, underground earthman named Gribble (Dan Fogler) and a rebel Martian girl called Ki (Elisabeth Harnois), Milo just might find his way back to his mom—in more ways than one. Based on the book by Berkeley Breath

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Mars Needs Moms Theatrical Review

Try as he may, Robert Zemekis cannot find his way out of the uncanny valley - that deep gorge where his other forays into motion-capture like The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol have fallen. For those who are unaware of what this valley is, look at the "human" faces in any of those films and see if they don't creep you out. Apparently, if the face is not human – a creature, alien, monster – then things are fine because we relegate the inconsistencies in muscle ticks and facial nuances to something more cartoonish. However, when the filmmakers want a person to look like a real person, there is always something off about them, something they have been unable to perfect. Though they look real, they don't move like we expect them to, the little twitches, the subtleties, it's like they were injected with too much Botox and they fall into the uncanny valley. It doesn't help that in Mars needs Moms, the on screen representations were modeled after the actors who lent them their movement and voices. I spent the beginning of the film thinking "Boy, that looks an awful lot like Joan Cusack, but in a disturbing way." If he has not yet, I wonder why Zemekis, who seems determined to conquer this motion-capture way of making films, hasn't joined forces with James Cameron or Peter Jackson and stolen some of their notes. Not that I approve of this style of filmmaking nor am I looking forward to seeing their next attempt (that goes for you too, Lucas), but if they're gonna do it, then they should work together and get us there faster. That all said, I was not as bothered by the weirdness of the people in this film all as I usually am and, in fact, found myself halfway through not caring about it at all and even, dare I say, enjoying the film.

Nine year old, Milo (Seth Green) finds out just how much he needs his mom (Joan Cusack) when Martians, who plan on taking her memories and mental capacities to power their nanny-bots, kidnap her. Milo hitches a ride on the space ship and finds a friend in the only other human on Mars, Gribble (Dan Fogler). There, with the help of a rebel female Martian, Ki (Elizabeth Harnois) they plan a way to get back Milo's mom and get back home.

The Martians pick out Milo's mom out of all the other mothers they've scanned because she is the rarest of creatures on earth - a mother whose son obeys her. However, if they would have only continued watching just a little longer, they would have seen that Milo does not obey his mother, at least not without a fight. But that's of course, because he needs to have some sort of story arc; he can't be perfect from the beginning, people! He has to have somewhere to grow.

The Martian young pop up out of the ground like potatoes or groundhogs, which is a nice way to skirt any of the questions the children in the audience may have about where Martian babies come from. The nanny bots raise only the Martian females, though. All of males are banished to the trash heaps to be raised by other males which means this planet is entirely ruled by women. We'll get back to that later. The alien designs are…interesting. All the women some serious child bearing hips (ironic since, as was previously stated, they do not bear the children) and all the males have dreadlock hair and Rasta colors…and are rather dim-witted. They all, however, male and female, have long, flat heads and therefore look like ET's taller cousins.

-- Marco Duran