Mars Needs Moms

Moms have traditionally had a tough time in Disney movies. The most famous incident naturally being Bambi's mom, but what about films like Finding Nemo or Tarzan, where the moms (and in Tarzan's case, the dad as well) didn't even live to see past the opening title credits? Now we have Mars Needs Moms, a kid's movie about tyrannical martians who kidnap a little boy's mom, and plot to drain the contents of her brain, before they kill her. Harsh.

Despite being co-written and directed by Simon Wells (2002's The Time Machine), the film is more likely the product of producer Robert Zemeckis, who for the past seven years, has been making a series of animated films using motion capture technology to capture actor's movements, instead of having the characters be animated on a computer. He's used this technology in films like The Polar Express, Beowulf, and more recently, A Christmas Carol. Since we're actually watching a live actor's physical performance being mimicked by a CG character, it does create a very lifelike sense of movement. However, the problem that has plagued these films since 2004's Polar Express still exists - the characters look lifeless in appearance, and have a glassy-eyed, waxy-skin, mannequin-like appearance. It's hard to buy into the human emotion of the story being told when the human characters constantly look off.

The story itself centers on little Milo (physical performance by Seth Green, voice by child actor Seth Dusky), a young boy coping with a "harsh" mother (Joan Cusack) who forces him to take out the garbage and eat his vegetables every day. The two have a blow out when Milo tries to stay up late to watch a zombie movie, an argument ensues, and before marching off for bed, Milo tells his mom that he wishes he didn't even have a mom. Young Milo has obviously never seen Home Alone, as whenever a child says something like that in a movie, the parents are destined to disappear moments later, and wacky adventures are bound to ensue! Later that night, Milo feels bad about what he said and goes to apologize, only to find his mom in the process of being abducted by aliens.

It seems that the Martians are led by an old alien crone known only as The Supervisor (Mindy Sterling), who rules their society with an iron fist of female dominance. The women on her planet hand their female babies over to Nannybots to be raised until they're old enough to become militant soldiers. What happens to the men, you ask? They're dumped down into the lower junkyard area of the planet, where they basically play and party all day. You could get into a lot of thorny interpretations of this part of the plot, and what it's trying to say about gender roles, but I'm going to move on. The Martians need Milo's mom, because they want to implant her memories and strict discipline skills into the Nannybots. When they have no more use for her, they plan to kill her.

Milo finds all of this out when he stows away on the ship headed back to Mars, and meets the only other human on the planet - a 30-something man-child named Gribble (Dan Fogler), who lost his mom the same way as Milo 25 years ago, was too late to save her, and has spent his life living in secret on Mars, playing video games and eating junk food. Milo becomes determined to save his own mom, and even gets support from one of the aliens - a Martian woman named Ki (Elizabeth Harnois) who is different from the others - She's laid back, mellow, and speaks in 60s Earth slang after discovering a 1960s sitcom about hippies on TV. This plot is supposedly borrowed from a children's book written by cartoonist Berkeley Breathed (best known for creating the comic strip, Bloom County). It's too bad the movie doesn't borrow some of Breathed's humor as well. It could have used some.

Mars Needs Moms frequently comes across as kind of dreary for a kid's movie. The Martian society, where militant females drop the males down garbage chutes, not caring if they die, and the whole plot about Milo racing against time to save his mom before she's killed hangs over the picture, creating a kind of unpleasant feeling. There are some attempts throughout the film at juvenile humor to lighten the mood, but other than a gag involving a urinating Martian baby, there were no bursts of laughter from the kids at the audience I watched it with. The real problem is that the movie just isn't all that interesting to begin with. Despite a swift 90 minute running time, the plot never seems to be in a hurry to get to where it's going, and the characters are not endearing enough for us to get behind. Throw in the waxy and unnatural look of the characters thanks to the process of the animation, and the whole experience just leaves you cold.

It's a shame this movie has to come out exactly one week after the wonderful and witty Rango. That is a movie full of life, invention, and wonderful offbeat characters. Mars Needs Moms, on the other hand, seems kind of lukewarm and generic. Given how good most animated films have gotten, and how many there are out now these days, parents need to be smarter with their money than ever before. This movie just doesn't cut it.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

0 comments