Voice work by Seth Green, Joan Cusack, Dan Fogler
Directed by Simon Wells
Plot: A young man learns what makes mothers special after his is kidnapped by Martians.
In 2007, Berkeley Breathed (creator of Bloom County & Opus) published one of my favorite children's books called Mars Needs Moms. It's the simple little story of a rebellious little boy who doesn't understand why mom's are special. He just sees them as summer-stealing, slave-driving, broccoli bullies. Until one night, when he's awakened in the night to find his mom being carried of by Martians. He stows away on their ship to rescue her. I won't spoil the ending, but it is one of the sweetest and most-touching stories I have ever read.
I was not overly excited to hear that they were turning this into a feature length production. When Hollywood attempts to turn a beloved picture book into a movie, more oft than not, they muck it up. I already had my concerns about this production when I saw trailers. They completely jettisoned Breathed's spectacular illustrations. In Breathed's illustrations, the Martians are jelly bean colored oddities; the movie opted for generic looking humanoid forms that have a simian look to them, particularly the males. The humans have the traditional look that anyone familiar with Breathed's comic strips would instantly recognize; the film employs the creepy motion capture technology employed in The Polar Express and last year's A Christmas Carol. I don't care for this animation style at all, particularly when it's used with people. It makes the characters look like an odd cross between CGI and he actual actors, and I find it completely takes me out of the film.
The film is also in 3D. It doesn't really seem to take advantage of the technology. Gnomeo and Juliet harnessed the 3D in a much better fashion, and last week's Rango had a much better story. I would even say that Rango, which was not in 3D, felt far more three-dimensional than Mars Needs Moms.
Problems with animation aside, how is the movie? It's not good. If you could take the first ten minutes and maybe the last ten minutes and lose all the crap in the middle, you would have a good short film, that might have even been worthy of a nomination for short film next year (if you could get past the animation style). Unfortunately, to make it into a feature length film, they've had to pad it, and then pad the padding some more.
In the film, the little boy is voiced by Seth Green; his mom portrayed by Joan Cusack (who is even creepier in motion capture). We get an additional human character portrayed by Dan Fogler, who is as annoying here as he was in last week's Take Me Home Tonight. Here he plays a boy who has been living on Mars for years after ending up there when his mom was taken. In the book, the Martians simply want moms to take them to soccer and ballet and to bandage boo-boos (they don't have them because they grow from the ground like potatoes). In the movie, it's far more sinister with the Martians wanting to use mom to program nanny bots (Mom does not fare well in the process).
Mars Needs Moms is a not worth your time or money. If you want to see it, wait for it to come out on DVD when you can just watch the first few scenes, fast forward through a lot of useless baggage until you get to the last few scenes. You won't regret spending money to see the movie (at 3D prices, no less) or losing the time spent in the theater, because this movie is truly a waste of time. In what has been, so far anyway, an uninspired year of film, this is the first I truly wished I had skipped. If this movie doesn't end up being one of the worst films of the year, I'll be amazed.
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