21 May 2012

mars needs mom

This review is from: Mars Needs Moms (DVD) Movie was fuzzy Not up to standard. Looked like a copy. Was not good enough to give for present. have bought many films from amazon that were better quality

Sandie Angulo Chen

20 May 2012

Surprisingly touching adventure has sad moments amid comedy.

20 May 2012

Great Family video

This review is from: Mars Needs Moms (Two-Disc Blu-ray / DVD Combo) (Blu-ray) this was a very good family oriented movie that had some values as to the way we should look at things we take for granted

Michelle Orange

20 May 2012

One tries to make sense of it this way and that and then leaves half admiring its outré visions of maternal care and coldness, half wishing its metaphorical swagger had either busted the story open or gotten out of its way.

14 May 2012

Earth doesn't need this movie!

After watching this thing I wondered about what audience it was intended for. Adults will find it largely preposterous, and I'm afraid most children will be frightened- particularly when they are led to believe that their mothers could be snatched away to another planet. The movie is visually impressive- particularly in 3D, but unfortunately it's 1D plot can't sustain it.

Jody Mitori

14 May 2012

If Breathed's style could have been applied to the animation, this offbeat story would have a better chance at success. Instead, we're left with a kids' movie that leaves audiences cold.

Peter Howell

13 May 2012

Mars Needs Moms isn't much of a movie, but it's a great teaching tool for how not to make an animated film.

Marjorie Baumgarten

13 May 2012

The motion-capture animation technique has come a long way since Robert Zemeckis (a producer on this film) introduced it in The Polar Express, but what's missing too often is the human element, especially during all the rambunctious activity on Mars.

12 May 2012

Entertaining and unfairly slammed family flick

"Mars Needs Moms" will never be mistaken for "Apocalpyse Now" much less "Toy Story" but it IS an entertaining diversion. It seems Simon Wells (the great grandson of H.G. Wells) can't escape his past or the subjects of his grandfather's writing; "Mars" makes the second time that Wells has worked on a project that is somehow tied into his great-grandfather's work (he also directed the recent live action version of "The Time Machine").It seems that good moms are being kidnapped by Martians to raise their newborns and young hero Milo (Seth Dusky--motion capture performance by Seth Green)gets whisked away with his mom (Joan Cusack)to the Red Planet and he must figure out a way to get both of them back to Earth. With the assistance of Reagan era secret astronaut Gribble (Dan Fogler) Milo must stop the Martians from doing something evil and wrong to his mom."Mars Needs Moms" looks positively stunning in HD. Colors pop and there's a level of detail that the BD disc provides nice resolution for. Audio is presented in 7.1 DTS-HD and sounds terrific as well. It's too bad that the film didn't get a bigger audience but that had more to do with marketing and less with the quality of the film itself.The special features are quite nice as well. We get a commentary track featuring director Wells, Green and Fogler (clearly recorded before the film premiered because they seem quite optimistic about the future of the film as a Disney franchise)."Life on Mars" focuses on the motion capture shooting that provided the basis for the animation."Martian 101" allows us to find out about the creation of the Martian language and culture for the film. "Fun with Seth" takes us behind-the-scenes on the set letting us see the cast goof off a bit.We also get deleted scenes and an alternate beginning in various states of completion with an introduction by director Simon Wells.It's a pity that "Mars Needs Moms" met with public indifference--if it had been marketed better it might have found it's audience as it's an entertaining film although not quite in the class of the work that Pixar does (although it does have a much darker story element than we would normally see in a Pixar flick).

12 May 2012

Great

This review is from: Mars Needs Moms (DVD) Movie plays good and received as described and it was received quick; just as expected! My kids loved it, they've seen it like 10 times already!

Sean O'Connell

11 May 2012

While Wells's ice-blue color scheme borrows from both "Tron" films and a litany of "Star Trek" episodes, a majestic musical score by the great composer John Powell somehow makes everything old feel fresh and wondrous again.

Michelle

11 May 2012

Underated Movie

For mom's and their sons, this movie is the equivalent of a "father-daughter dance". My 5-year old son loved it (critics forgot who the target audience for this movie is). Space, rockets, robots and being "mom's hero" - my 5-year old son was thrilled. After the movie it was priceless to see how the movie impacted him -he was being his sweetest self (it lasted a day and then back to normal, but still sweet). Moms if you have a young son - see together. Critics have obviously forgotten what appeals to a young boy.

timotheus

09 May 2012

My 50 kopecks

Went to see it with my 7 y.o. daughter. It is an entertaining andheartwarming story. Period. I am really baffled as I do not have asingle clue about what all the other reviewers who are so infuriatedwith this flick were expecting to see. Unhappy with the story? With howthe aliens look? I... really do not know what to say. My kid wastouched, I was entertained. 3D is realistic. Story flaws? How elsewould you fit it all into an hour and a half of running time? Is therea flawless animated flick? Is there a flawless movie? "Disney has lostits soul"? "Sold it to the devil"? Well, whatever. By the way, what isthe percentage of reviews written by kids in this thread?

zetes

09 May 2012

Quite good, actually

Easily the biggest flop of 2011, and pretty close to of all time, thisDisney motion-capture film is about a young boy, Milo, who must savehis mother (Joan Cusack) from Martians. In Martian society, femalesrule the world. They discard the males (who then live on thetrash-strewn surface world) and the females are raised by nanny-bots.They need the Earth mothers in order to program these nanny-bots, andthe process they use leaves the Earth mothers dead. With the help ofanother human (Dan Fogler), who was brought up to Mars in the samefashion as Milo (trying to rescue his own mother, he stowed away ontheir ship), and a rebellious female Martian (Elisabeth Harnois), Milosets out to save his mother. A lot of viewers get stuck on the film'sgender politics. I admit they do seem a little backward, especiallywith the shrill, feminist stand-in villain (played by Mindy Sterling,whom you may remember as Frau Farbissina from the Austin Powersmovies). However, I think that Ki, the Martian girl who helps Milo, isa positive enough female character that she should make up for thevillain (the remainder of the female Martians are more or less facelesssoldiers). If you can get past that stuff, the film is actually a lotof fun. Simple and straightforward, but a lot of fun. It's fast pacedand beautiful to look at (thankfully, now that it's on video, you don'thave to see the colors diminished in 3D), and it's very funny. Foglerand Harnois are both very good. Fogler's character, Gribble, is easilythe best looking motion capture character I've ever seen. Gribble is an80s kid and Ki has fallen in love with humanity after watching sitcomsabout hippies, so they both talk in idioms from those eras, buggingmodern 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 inwith the late crop of severely undervalued Disney films of the pastseveral years, which includes The Princess and the Frog and Meet theRobinsons. None of these films are masterpieces or on par with Pixar'sbest, but they're excellent films nonetheless.

06 May 2012

Mars may need moms, but this film really need total "performance capture?"

What makes Mars Needs Moms an unfortunate misfire isn't so much what it is, but what it could have been. The talent was there, with a fine cast, a seasoned group of artists behind the scenes and an interesting idea. I just wonder what might have happened had this been a CG or a live action movie.Motion capture, or as it is now insistently known, "performance capture," records the actions of the actors and transfers them into what is more akin to the "rotoscoping" process in Gulliver's Travels (1939). It seems best used for non-human creatures, like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, or to affect a total dreamlike feeling, as in The Polar Express. Somehow it is emerging more as a tool than a medium.When I saw Jim Carrey in A Christmas Carol, I really wanted to see his own face, since he was doing such an outstanding job. I felt the same way about Joan Cusack in Mars. Why cover such artistry with a plastic sheet? Kind of like my Aunt Sadie's couch. (Sorry, that was a little harsh.)The aliens are less disturbing and odd than the humans in Mars Needs Moms. Maybe this process will keep getting better each time, but who knows. What is a fact is that Disney is now taking the words "of Mars" off John Carter of Mars to avoid any comparison. They needn't have worried--it's not the word "Mars" that kept people away, though many of us might have thought of the B-grade sci-fi comedy "Mars Needs Women" when hearing the title "Mars Needs Moms."The Blu-ray looks marvelous--this is a very elaborate production, so I would not say to avoid it, actually-- and there are a few extras, including footage of the actors before the process was added, which only serves to show how much we should have seen their real faces rather than overlays.

actiondallas

05 May 2012

not as bad as everyone has made it out to be

I saw it with two of my little cousins and i was not looking forward toit atall after hearing how it bombed in box office and everyonesreviews were really bad. It turns out I kinda liked it, the animationwas very cool in 3D, which it must be seen in 3D or not nearly as cool.It was simple family friendly entertainment, very vibrant and originalwith very creative digital technology behind it. It was fast paced andkept the kiddies smilin'. More than I was expecting definitely, andoverrall not that bad, I would definitely recommend if you are lookingfor a film to bring some kids to. As a small bonus at the end theyshows behind the scenes of how they filmed it with live action actors,very cool.

05 May 2012

I imagine feminists will not like this movie, but I did!

Written by a 14 year old girl:"Mars Needs Moms" was an excellent movie the whole family enjoyed watching. We even watched it twice in one weekend so that we could talk about its messages and how they were different from the selfish messages of "follow your heart" and "believe in yourself". This movie supported traditional family relationships and family discipline. It was a breath of fresh air.Milo is a typical young, questioning boy who resents some of the demands his mother makes of him. He doesn't really appreciate all that she does for him until she is taken by Martians. Milo follows his mother's captors to their space ship and is taken to Mars also. On Mars, Milo discovers a man named Gripple who tells him that the Martians are planning to take his mother's memories so that they can program their nanny-bots to train the baby Martians. Interestingly, they have chosen Milo's mother because of her ability to control and train her child. They had to search Earth diligently to find this type of mother, which they value for their own children. In the process of taking her memories, the Martians will kill Milo's mother. Ki is a defiant Martian who has fallen in love with color and secretly goes around the city, spraying colored flower graffiti on the walls. The Supervisor is one of the oldest Martians on Mars and she has deliberately gotten rid of all the "worthless and lazy" men - sending them all below to the trash heaps - while she keeps all the girls and trains them into soldiers, keeping the two separated. She hates Ki's flower displays and calls them an act of terrorism. The Supervisor believes she has created the perfect world: the men are kept out of the way, robots take care of the children, and women are independent to rule and organize themselves. The women warriors do not know that life was different at one time. That there was love and companionship and families. Milo doesn't want his last words to his mother to be "My life would be better if I didn't have a mom." Milo has to save his mom and Mars.This was an incredible movie and I loved the great messages it taught. It showed the importance of family and love, and gave an example of what happens when you remove the men and the family relationship from a society. That when you remove love, you also remove the love of beauty. This amazing movie also showed the value and importance of children being disciplined and raised by two loving parents. The animation was really well done and all the actors were really funny. It was nice to see a functional family that loved each other and to see a movie supporting traditional family values. We need to encourage this.Would I/Did I buy it? NoWould I watch it again? Yes Would I recommend it to friends? Yes

04 May 2012

Earth needs this movie like it needs a hole in the head.

As you would expect there are aliens in Mars Needs Moms, and they speak Martian. The makers of this wretched film saw no need to translate and, to be fair, nor is there any: no matter how incoherent their gibberish is, you don't need to understand it to get the gist, and to try to would be to miss the point.And that about sums up this film: that it is largely incoherent makes no odds; so diligently is it structured by rote you know exactly what is going on, how it will end and each of the Stations of the Cross you'll pass through on the miserable journey that is sitting through it.Usually, I like bad films. There's a voyeuristic pleasure in observing public displays of ineptitude. It's fun reviewing them. It's challenging trying to unpick what went wrong. Badness, in its way, can be entertaining and stimulating. But not with this picture.There is much to admire but nothing at all to like about Mars Needs Moms.There undoubted artisanship (some of which is revealed during the closing credits) in the physical performances required of actors, trussed up in rubber suits, donning CGI headsets and with motion detectors up the wazoo. But these days, it's still ho-hum: we have ceased to be thrilled or even distracted by excellent digital rendering. Technological achievement is a given.But it gives not nearly enough to make this experience worthwhile. A bad trip in cinematic 3-D is still a bad trip. You do wonder if they wouldn't have been better just filming the blessed thing and painting in the background. At least, that way, we could see the real (and eminently admirable) Joan Cusack rather than her ugly, animated approximation.You also wonder whose bright idea the film's basic premise was. It's a stinker: Mars is short of mums - sorry, *moms* - to bring up the Martian young. This shortage they overcome by abducting earthling mothers, sucking their mothering skills out of them (naturally, by pointing a concentrated beam of pure sunlight at their brains and vaporising them) and infusing the extracted essence of motherhood into "nannybots" which the Martians use to raise their young. (How, you might ask? More to the point, why? Wouldn't an intensive week's course in parenting skills from the Earthlings be a better, less wasteful thing?)So to the action. The Martians target suburban mid west America (and not Cambodia, Italy or the Sudan) for their ideal mom. They kidnap Joan Cusack's ugly avatar while her child Milo (even uglier) frets in his bed that he hasn't appreciated his mom enough. Guiltily he hops out of bed, sees flashing lights under the door (you know, a la Close Encounters) and gives chase while the aliens whisk her away, yielding enough Oedipal innuendo to last a lifetime: Well, at least someone appreciates her. Cue adventure.The Martians, it turns out, are run by an humourless old bat apparently modelled on an elderly Japanese lady, a character lending the film a weak misogynistic current and a stronger xenophobic one. But whatever the underlying politics, the set-up is just stupid: could they really not think of anything better than that? Martians kidnapping moms? Is this what now passes for wit?Continuity errors and illogicalities abound: on Mars, the Martians walk around in space suits. Apparently they don't need them on Earth.So Milo, of course, stows away, planning to rescue his stupefied mother (Cusack, too, must have been stupefied to agree to this). On arrival on Mars the semblance of dramatic or narrative artistry is jettisoned and the computer whizzkids are allowed to take over. The pace explodes, we're galloping around assorted tableaux ripped off from other films (Tron, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, WALL-E, Star Wars, Toy Story, Avatar, even Labyrinth), meeting new characters none of whom are explained, contextualised or justified and all of whom act in unaccountable ways.Most frenetic, over excited and irritating is Gribble (Dan Fogler), an Earthling left over from a previous mission. (Yes: we've been here before. Did they run out of Earth mom serum to inject their robots with?) Gribble isn't at all funny, though that doesn't seem to be how Fogler sees it. His performance, and really the whole film, reminded me of a recent Charlie Sheen interview. For those who haven't seen one, think Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now. In a bad way.It is possible to surf over this tidal wave of absurdity because, no matter how little anything makes sense on a micro-level, on a macro level so slavish is this film's devotion to formula we know who the good guy is (Milo - even if it's tremendously hard to like him), we know who the bad guy is, and we know who the selfish, flawed helper is who comes through in the end. As the film stampedes towards its ridiculous conclusion there is a breathtakingly cynical swipe at emotion that only Disney would dream of trying to get away with - a straight-red-card, two-footed lunge of a leg breaker that is so grim I can't find the fortitude to even tell you about it.I walked out of the theatre grumpier than I'd entered it, and as neither of my kids enjoyed the film much either (by consensus the best bit was when Cujo the cat threw up three minutes in - and you can see that on the trailer), I was only returned to good humour when I heard that this film has created a Martian-sized crater at the box office.Gribble-un-tastic.Olly Buxton

Alex Zane

01 May 2012

While the multi-level Mars is an impressive backdrop there's no getting past performance capture problems.

Robert

01 May 2012

A movie that touches your heart

I wasn't expecting this at all. I really wasn't. I hadn't read the badreviews, however I saw the trailer and figured it would be quite cheesyand probably lame. Oh no aliens took my mother and I have to stop them!Sounded like a cheesy cartoon which would involve shooting aliens andrunning around to find his mom and save her, yada yada yada.Well... boy was I surprised.The movie started out with the whole alien world and because I knew thetitle was Mars needs Moms it implied the aliens were looking for moms.I watched them show two moms who's kids weren't listening, then itshowed a third one who minded his mom. Satisfied by this result, itshows the boy and his mom and how the boy is in that age where hedoesn't know why he should listen to his mom. Before they go to bed hesays he wishes he didn't have a mom. The emotion from that makes youfeel so bad.Now many scenes later the mom got abducted by the aliens, and the boymanaged to hitch a ride and meets some new friends and learns a lot. Bythe time the ending comes you really hope he can save his mom. Theemotions I felt were amazing. More amazing though was the fact that Ieve got some nears near the end. I won't say what happens, but it wasvery emotional and powerful to me.So I would recommend this movie to anyone. And I'm 18 for yourinformation, so hearing that a young adult got tears from a movie likethis must be something.Rated 8/10.