Mars Needs Moms (2011) Review by TreyVore

 Mars Needs Moms (2011)

Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures

Director: Simon Wells

Cast: Seth Green (Milo’s motion capture)/Seth Dusky (Milo’s voice), Dan Fogler (Gribble), Elizabeth Harnois (Ki), Mindy Sterling (Martian Supervisor), Joan Cusack (Milo’s mother), Kevin Cahoon (Wingnut)

Runtime: 88 min.

MPAA rating: PG (sci-fi action and peril)

This movie is about a 9 year old boy named Milo who lives a normal life with his parents. After an argument involving broccoli, he winds up hurting his mom and wants to make amends but then discovers she’s being abducted by Martians. With the aid of a manchild astronaut named Gribble and a Martian graffiti artist named Ki Milo has to find out why she has been abducted and if he can find his mother, can he rescue her in time?

Before I begin, I will say that I remember back in 1991, an animated Christmas cartoon was made out of Berkeley Breathed’s book Opus n’ Bill in A Wish for Wings that Work. He hated the cartoon after being disappointed with the ratings and feeling that his characters, designs and humor don’t translate to animation, but the cartoon still got a fanbase and is fondly remembered by people. I also remember back in 2016 when I met Michael Bell at a Transformers con I brought up his role as Opus the Penguin and he said I was the first to mention it, being one of his favorite voice roles.

I was at least aware of the book before this movie was released, having seen and read through it at a local Walgreens. If I had to describe the book it is a child’s story of telling kids the importance of appreciating your mother (nothing wrong with that), but I will admit I was a bit offput the visuals—it looks very much like a sentimental story told with “Wacky Packages”-style artwork. Did I mention that was the card series that started the Garbage Pail Kids? And let’s not invoke memories of that movie…

Courtesy of ImageMovers Digital, the movie uses motion capture animation as they had done in the past with their other all-animation movies like The Polar Express and their version of A Christmas Carol.

And then it went under. Despite the technological advances, the story from a well-known cartoonist and the reliable pairing of Robert Zemeckis and Disney, this movie was essentially the death knell for ImageMovers Digital; it cost $150 million to make and made only $39 million worldwide. The suits at Disney were likely channeling their Homer Simpson and yelled “Sweet merciful crap!!” Adding insult to injury, the movie needed the premium prices from IMAX exhibitions and 3D shows to make that.

What went wrong? Oh, I can find more than a few things…

When I finally sat down to watch this movie, no joke, 3 minutes in the first thing I said was “I’m going to hate this!”

1: Lack of world-building. The movie doesn’t bother giving too much info regarding who the characters are supposed to be. I guess Milo is the character we are supposed to gravitate towards, but we learn very little about him other than he likes zombie movies and hates broccoli. His mom is supposed to be a caring parent and… that’s it. Milo says something hateful and that is what sets the movie in motion. The line in question is not really any worse that what I remember Kevin McAllister once said in Home Alone, but the reason why I wasn’t bothered by Kevin’s statement was probably because I had at least some incentive to understand some of the grievances he had with his family. Milo’s just a douche as far as we know. Plus he was aged up for the movie as opposed to his book counterpart and as a result he is acting like he’s a lot younger than he’s supposed to be. It doesn’t better when we go to Mars, do the Martians even need genders if babies just pop up out of the ground like weeds?

2: Unfortunate Implications. On Mars the male martians are treated like inferior beings and thrown in a garbage dump. As a result the female martians now run the planet. However the babies are just too much of a handful for the martian women so they need these nannybots to raise the children for them. Because it’s truly impossible to have both a steady career and be a caring parent right? And is it wrong to have any type of family other than the Leave It to Beaver family?

3: It’s too scary for its intended audience. So how do these nannybots function? Well the Mars society needs to kidnap human mothers from Earth and use their mom essence to power the robots. In doing so, the human mother is drained and then essentially vaporized, and that is just too much for very little kids to take. Imagine being a small child and having to identify with such an issue and that is essentially the conflict of the movie.

4: The message is broken. It wants kids to appreciate their moms. Because if you do, she’ll be abducted and then vaporized. How do you stop this? DON’T appreciate your mom and be a brat? Worse, it’s lampshaded within the movie itself. It is like the movie knows it’s just too stupid for its own message.

5: The Uncanny Valley. The movie uses motion-capture animation and tries to digitally animate the characters to look like they are supposed to be like real people. I never understood the point of this because not only does the animation have no charm, it’s unnerving because we know what a real human looks like. The human characters all look like they are supposed to be plastic dolls with glass eyes and it scares people on accident. Not that the Martians are any better, mind you.

6: It’s emotionally unengaging. Sure the stakes are high and there’s plenty of potential life-or-death scenarios, but despite that the story just feels too fluffy to really make you care if anybody lives or dies. So what can they do? Pick an emotion they want you to feel and force it. How do you think Gribble wound up on Mars? How are the viewers supposed to feel? Sad? Okay so… just go overboard with it, that’s all they can do. Rubber ball against a wall.

7: The villain sucks. The Martian supervisor is supposed to be the conflict in that she thinks the men are worthless and the women should be ruling Mars. But she doesn’t do much other than bark orders (not helping matters is she isn’t even subtitled, so no one can truly understand her, a Klingon she is not). So this villain is not terribly effective.

8: The humor is likely to be lost on the kids. There’s jokes and references to the 1960s and the 1980s courtesy of Milo’s two compatriots, but they probably won’t register because they won’t understand the context. Do they really think kids will get hippie movements or eating Smurfberry Crunch?

Do I really need to go on? I knew I was going to hate this movie after only three minutes and I was right. What was good? Well… it always carries a level of professionalism about it, so at least they were doing their jobs right but failing hard? And the sounds are always clear? I guess that works for it.

So, if you are not picking up the hints, I don’t recommend this movie. You’ll probably only want to watch it once and then never again. I don’t like to pass this kind of judgement off to just any movie, but this is one movie that deserved to be a disastrous, massive box-office bust. At least it looks and sounds great?

Mars Needs Moms (2011)

TreyVore rates it: F - Fail!