Milo su Marte

This was better than some, no worse than others. I love Seth Green, and if he hadn't been listed in the credits you would have known in two seconds it was him. It looked almost too real, as every facial expression and reaction shot seemed too real. I think cartoons should be more cartoony--does that make sense? If you strive so hard to make cartoons look like real images, then why not just make a movie using real objects? That being said, the story wasn't horrible, and it is just repeating the title to tell you that mom is kidnapped by horrible aliens who wish to learn from her how to be a mother. There are reasons that will be explained. What I didn't like was that the idiots in the movie seem to be stereotyped from blacks from jamaica. So, getting past that, my recommendation is this: don't be a daddy in the theater. If you are going to watch this with your 3-7 year old crowd, it is a mommy son movie and can be touching. When it comes out on TV, i am sure the wife will enjoy watching it with her little men. As for me? Well, 8 bucks for the ticket and to keep the kids quiet for 88 minutes? Sure, not a bad trade off.

The average rating for this movie by professional film critics is about 3.0 out of 5 stars. That average is realistic. I would probably give it 6.5 out of 10 if I could, but I didn't feel it was as bad as movies I've given 6 out of 10 stars, so I gave it a 7 out of 10.

The movie uses motion-capture computer animation to apply more realistic textures and movements to its characters, following movies like A Christmas Carol (which wasn't as good), Beowulf (which was much better), and The Polar Express (also much better).

Mars Needs Moms features a plot that wasn't demographically targeted correctly. It features a boy who needs to rescue his mother from awkwardly humanoid-looking Martians, but boys that age are working very hard to separate themselves from needing their mothers. It is a very natural consequence of a male's life. So while the movie might appeal to mothers, I'm not sure it will appeal to boys.

The next problem, which exacerbates the previous one, is its timing. The studio made a big, big mistake trying to release it at the same time as Battle: Los Angeles, and only a week after Rango. Parents already took their kids to Rango the weekend before, and the dads really wanted to see Battle: Los Angeles (especially after being sorely disappointed with the similarly themed Skyline last Fall).

A lot of movies in January through March have been juggled around recently, causing all sorts of problems. Many movies were yanked from their original release dates and moved out later in the year. But Mars Needs Moms should have been released in early January. It would have fared a lot better. As it is, the movie has been a complete disaster at the Box Office. I fault Disney for the poor release strategy (they were only the distributor, not the actual producer of the movie), and Simon Wells for the rest.

There is also the point that a lot of viewers were troubled by the Martians themselves. I think Simon Wells could have had his animators design them a little more intelligently. They seemed awkward to me -- they were humanoid, but slightly differenced to a degree that some people found disagreeable: legs too far apart, butts too big, and legs like they were inflated with air. Mr. Wells also made the mistake of giving the male Martians dreadlocks-like hair, which has accidentally incited a lot of racist remarks, although racial nods was not intended. (People really need to stop being oversensitive. Grow some skin, please!)

There is an army of people flaming the movie, however, and the computer animation is at the core of their argument, which is very curious. One critic said, "Mars Needs Moms stands as the potentially final Zemeckis-produced motion-capture effort, and, like The Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol before it, its characters boast the waxy complexions, unreal movements, and dead eyes of mannequins..." (Nick Schager, The Village Voice)

What the...? I'm confused here. What standard is this critic holding computer animated features to? I don't recall any waxy complexions or unreal movements or dead eyes of mannequins in any of these movies, or at least nothing that distracted me from the otherwise near photo-realistic computer animation that has only been around a few years. While they fall short of the realism of characters inserted into live action movies such as Peter Jackson's King Kong and Gollum, or George Lucas's Yoda in Star Wars episodes II & III, and certainly not the characters in Avatar, it didn't strike me as being a requirement in an animated feature to be THAT photo-realistic. Nobody complained about Shrek's movements being unrealistic or his eyes being dead as a mannequins, but clearly Shrek isn't being held to the same animation standard. What gives?

While I'm not going to defend Mars Needs Moms on every point, I don't understand the beating its taking from reviewers here at IMDb. It's a fairly average film from a director who isn't very good to begin with, with plotting that could have been better and could have been worse, and some character design that could have been more intelligent. But unfortunately there seems to be a subculture out there (probably made up of mostly teens, and maybe even competing film marketers and computer animation folk -- perhaps some Rango promoters attempting to keep its returns high in the second week) who are throwing one stars around IMDb with malignant glee. To give 1 out of 10 stars to this movie is dishonest, and an abuse of having a rating system in the first place. There were 404 people who gave A Bug's Life "1 star" for example, and 3,284 who gave Shrek "1 star." And so forth. Movies need to be rated with some perspective on similar movies.

Mars Needs Moms has some redeeming values. Not nearly as witty as Tangled or Shrek, but easier to understand and more enjoyable than Rango, which seemed to bore my two boys (4 and 7) whereas Mars Needs Moms entertained them. In all fairness, Rango was intended for slightly older children than mine, but I'm a pretty old child myself, with a lot more filmmaking, movie-going, and storytelling experience than the average IMDb reviewer, and I didn't find Rango nearly as brilliant as Johnny Depp's ground-worshipers claim.

My advice to you, if you haven't seen Mars Needs Moms, is ask your kid if he or she is interested, and if so, take them. Forget about what you hear about it on IMDb boards, it's likely tainted.

I'm a mom. Milo looked and acted just like my 12-year-old son. ... I was touched by the film. Was it perfect? No. The '60s slang and cultural references bugged me. As a woman who grew up during the women's movement in the 1970s, I knew some people would be offended by the vaguely antifeminist themes. But it could be argued that there were some underlying "liberal" themes, too (antiestablishment politics, guerilla art, individuality, education, a sense of true history, anthropology, science, and other "revolutionary," anti-religious ideas).

It could be argued that women have made so much progress in our culture that they are fair targets as the "oppressor," too. It's important to note, that the flipside message of this film is that Mars needs dads, too. Though I really could not stand the way the men were portrayed in this film (mangy, goofy, dancing thingies in '60s hippie rags.) I'm not familiar with the book, but the cultural references seemed really, really out of synch with several generations, and I was alive in the '60s (as a child).

In the end, though, my geek side loved the motion-capture appearance of the film. We saw it in iMax 3D (the only way to watch these films), and were blown away by the animation. We are not offended by Disney technology and storytelling. We've seen the good side of Disney in so many ways at their theme parks, cruises (Castaway Cay!!!), etc. ... So, it saddens me to see a touching family film go down in flames because of a few storytelling defects, bad timing, and anti-Disney sentiment.

In Mars, the female babies are nursed by robots while the male babies are dumped in the junkyard under the command of Supervisor. They research Earth and finds that the boy Milo is raised by his Mon with love and discipline.

The Martians come to Earth and abduct Mon, to use her brain to instruct the robots about how to raise children. However, Milo slinks into the spaceship and comes to Mars. He meets Gribble, a young man that behaves like a child and together with the hippie Martian Ki and Gribble's friend Wingnut, they try to rescue Mon and bring her back to Earth. But Supervisor will give her best efforts to stop Milo and his friends.

"Mars Needs Moms" is a delightful underrated animation about that crazy love thing and a tribute to the mothers and to the families. There is no explanation of how the Martians breed but the wonderful story can be easy enjoyed by those that have the concept of family, and not hatchery. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Marte Precisa de Mães" ("Mars Needs Moms")

Easily the biggest flop of 2011, and pretty close to of all time, this Disney motion-capture film is about a young boy, Milo, who must save his mother (Joan Cusack) from Martians. In Martian society, females rule the world. They discard the males (who then live on the trash-strewn surface world) and the females are raised by nanny-bots. They need the Earth mothers in order to program these nanny-bots, and the process they use leaves the Earth mothers dead. With the help of another human (Dan Fogler), who was brought up to Mars in the same fashion as Milo (trying to rescue his own mother, he stowed away on their ship), and a rebellious female Martian (Elisabeth Harnois), Milo sets out to save his mother. A lot of viewers get stuck on the film's gender politics. I admit they do seem a little backward, especially with the shrill, feminist stand-in villain (played by Mindy Sterling, whom you may remember as Frau Farbissina from the Austin Powers movies). However, I think that Ki, the Martian girl who helps Milo, is a positive enough female character that she should make up for the villain (the remainder of the female Martians are more or less faceless soldiers). If you can get past that stuff, the film is actually a lot of fun. Simple and straightforward, but a lot of fun. It's fast paced and beautiful to look at (thankfully, now that it's on video, you don't have to see the colors diminished in 3D), and it's very funny. Fogler and Harnois are both very good. Fogler's character, Gribble, is easily the best looking motion capture character I've ever seen. Gribble is an 80s kid and Ki has fallen in love with humanity after watching sitcoms about hippies, so they both talk in idioms from those eras, bugging modern kid Milo the whole time. I think most kids will love this movie, and it imparts a nice moral (respect your damn mother!). This fits in with the late crop of severely undervalued Disney films of the past several years, which includes The Princess and the Frog and Meet the Robinsons. None of these films are masterpieces or on par with Pixar's best, but they're excellent films nonetheless.