Let's not kid ourselves -- Mars doesn't need moms, and Earth doesn't need this movie. Mars Needs Moms is a film that regurgitates witless moronism at the audience for 90 minutes and concludes with an uncomfortable statement about the importance of dominant patriarchy in modern society. To be fair, I don't think such a message is necessarily intentional -- I'm almost certain this film is incapable of thinking on that high a level.
Walt Disney Pictures obviously wasn't thinking on a very high level either, considering this is easily the worst film the studio has churned out in nearly a decade. There is no charm or magic at play in this screenplay, no joy exuded from the film's one-dimensional characters, no sense of discovery upon entering the movie's shapeless universe. Not that the film is necessarily aiming to be anything other than a relentless one-dimensional chucklefest, but it even fails in that regard -- one can count the number of laughs in the film on less than one finger.
"Story" doesn't necessarily exist in the film; it plays more like a vague concept drawn out to excruciating feature length. To wit, Milo (played in body by Seth Green and in voice by a more age-appropriate actor named Seth Robert Dusky), a whiny brat who doesn't want to take out the trash, witnesses the abduction of his long-suffering mother (Joan Cusack, whose own facial expressions are far more expressively animated than her lifeless digitized rendering) after a particularly thorny night of misbehavior. Of course, he chases after her and winds up on the alien spacecraft, where he is reminded just how darn important moms are after all, and where he sets out to rescue poor Mom before her brain is sucked out and her body explodes into nothingness.
Yes, those Martians are pretty ruthless when it comes to hijacking the ideal parenting style of the American housewife. A league of rogue Mars femi-nazis led by a figure that resembles E.T's grandma (played with unnecessary vigor by Mindy Sterling) have established a practice of swiping the best of Earth's maternal figures and sucking out their life force...or something like that. They've banished the males of their race (who now resemble wild Martian Cro-Magnon men) to a subterranean landfill so they can implant the motherly powers into robots who systematically raise the Martian babies that grow out of the ground. That description might confuse you, but seeing the film will only make it worse.
Together with a slovenly, annoying earthling who has long inhabited the alien ship (played in a most annoying, slovenly fashion by Dan Fogler) and a free-spirited Martian female who questions Granny Martian's evil plot (Elizabeth Harnois, in the film's only mildly interesting and effective performance), little Milo sets out to save his comatose mother from the clutches of Feminized Destruction. In the process, he uncovers ancient Martian chalk drawings that illuminate how life on Mars ultimately should be: dominant father figure, subservient female, and the resulting happy, well-bred children. These scurrilous Fem-artians must be stopped so the Patriarchy can be restored. After all, what's next -- two female Martians raising a child together? Oh my, the scandal!
Offensive undercurrents notwithstanding, the animation in Mars Needs Moms is about as ugly as I've seen in this era of revolutionary CG motion capture. Essentially, the film looks like a low-rent Robert Zemeckis impersonation -- and indeed, Zemeckis served as an executive producer on the film under the auspices of his Image Movers production house. Clearly he reserves the top-flight technology for himself, since the work here is such a downgrade in quality that it seems those skin-tight motion capture suits (showcased during the closing credits in a nauseating "let's-watch-the-cast-and-crew-dance" sequence) were rubbed in dirt before being used. The human characters all suffer from a terminal case of Dead Eye Syndrome, but the aliens look no better; it seems oxymoronic in this day and age to refer to would-be state-of-the-art computer animation as "crude," but there is no better word to describe the look -- and, what's more, the feel -- of Mars Needs Moms.
Walt Disney Pictures obviously wasn't thinking on a very high level either, considering this is easily the worst film the studio has churned out in nearly a decade. There is no charm or magic at play in this screenplay, no joy exuded from the film's one-dimensional characters, no sense of discovery upon entering the movie's shapeless universe. Not that the film is necessarily aiming to be anything other than a relentless one-dimensional chucklefest, but it even fails in that regard -- one can count the number of laughs in the film on less than one finger.
"Story" doesn't necessarily exist in the film; it plays more like a vague concept drawn out to excruciating feature length. To wit, Milo (played in body by Seth Green and in voice by a more age-appropriate actor named Seth Robert Dusky), a whiny brat who doesn't want to take out the trash, witnesses the abduction of his long-suffering mother (Joan Cusack, whose own facial expressions are far more expressively animated than her lifeless digitized rendering) after a particularly thorny night of misbehavior. Of course, he chases after her and winds up on the alien spacecraft, where he is reminded just how darn important moms are after all, and where he sets out to rescue poor Mom before her brain is sucked out and her body explodes into nothingness.
Yes, those Martians are pretty ruthless when it comes to hijacking the ideal parenting style of the American housewife. A league of rogue Mars femi-nazis led by a figure that resembles E.T's grandma (played with unnecessary vigor by Mindy Sterling) have established a practice of swiping the best of Earth's maternal figures and sucking out their life force...or something like that. They've banished the males of their race (who now resemble wild Martian Cro-Magnon men) to a subterranean landfill so they can implant the motherly powers into robots who systematically raise the Martian babies that grow out of the ground. That description might confuse you, but seeing the film will only make it worse.
Together with a slovenly, annoying earthling who has long inhabited the alien ship (played in a most annoying, slovenly fashion by Dan Fogler) and a free-spirited Martian female who questions Granny Martian's evil plot (Elizabeth Harnois, in the film's only mildly interesting and effective performance), little Milo sets out to save his comatose mother from the clutches of Feminized Destruction. In the process, he uncovers ancient Martian chalk drawings that illuminate how life on Mars ultimately should be: dominant father figure, subservient female, and the resulting happy, well-bred children. These scurrilous Fem-artians must be stopped so the Patriarchy can be restored. After all, what's next -- two female Martians raising a child together? Oh my, the scandal!
Offensive undercurrents notwithstanding, the animation in Mars Needs Moms is about as ugly as I've seen in this era of revolutionary CG motion capture. Essentially, the film looks like a low-rent Robert Zemeckis impersonation -- and indeed, Zemeckis served as an executive producer on the film under the auspices of his Image Movers production house. Clearly he reserves the top-flight technology for himself, since the work here is such a downgrade in quality that it seems those skin-tight motion capture suits (showcased during the closing credits in a nauseating "let's-watch-the-cast-and-crew-dance" sequence) were rubbed in dirt before being used. The human characters all suffer from a terminal case of Dead Eye Syndrome, but the aliens look no better; it seems oxymoronic in this day and age to refer to would-be state-of-the-art computer animation as "crude," but there is no better word to describe the look -- and, what's more, the feel -- of Mars Needs Moms.
