User reviews

I had naively thought that Hollywood would have learned by now from the unmitigated disaster that was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Audiences reacted with almost universal derision to its incomprehensible plot, creepy rubber doll animation and arrogant assumption that anything done in computer animation would be a mega hit. I remember being on a bus at SIGGRAPH 2001 and watching several prominent folks from Sony and Disney rip that film apart while a Squaresoft animator in the back cringed and hoped nobody would notice his Final Fantasy tee shirt.

But Disney seems to have repeated history with Mars Needs Moms. Ten years later the company that literally wrote the book on how to make animated features has topped that box office meltdown with one that gives every indication of being an even bigger disaster. How could that be? They've had some absolutely stunning successes recently, particularly Tangled and Enchanted, which gave me hope that the old Disney was back at last. But after about ten minutes in the theater I knew Mars Needs Moms was going to be a bomb. Wooden "animation" using motion capture, which always looks weird unless properly massaged. Bizarre and disturbing plot, poor script. That about sums it up. Clearly the pitch men and money grubbers still prevail in the corporate offices at Disney. Thank heaven at least they canceled the made to fail Yellow Submarine remake. And thank heaven Walt isn't around to see the shambles of his creation.

I'm going to start of by saying that I was really looking forward to this movie, the trailer seemed solid and the animation in it looked top notch. After having seen the movie now I feel very disappointed.

The story is about a boy that finds himself being taken to Mars to save his mom whom has been abducted by aliens. On his "quest" he meets a couple of sidekicks and together they share an adventure of epic fails. It's just not interesting, and above all: it's very, very badly put together.

I really got the feeling that the people who made this film put the story on the second place and wanted to make something that was visually stunning (and possibly able to compete with Avatar *which it doesn't*) and action-packed.

While there certainly are really nice visuals in the movie, they too are messed up by the mega-awkward weirdness of seeing Seth Green transformed into a 10 year old boy and the overall weirdness of the whole movie. The plot is superthin and it all seems super random.

I could go on and on about the way they made this and why it's not deserving of the Disney title, but let's just leave it at that it's sure as hell no pixar!