It's incredibly difficult to watch Martian Child and not immediately compare it to K-Pax, a much better movie with the same exact basic plot and significantly more satisfaction, unless you have a thing for watching young boys. It tries to make a father-son relationship work by throwing in the idea that the kid thinks he's a Martian and having the father find that intriguing because he's a science-fiction writer. Naturally, the two should go together like Neeblorks and Grapvwats, right? Let's go with "no" on that one. It doesn't mean shit if you don't actually follow through with your concept and Martian Child just sort of didn't care to expand on itself, not just missing the mark, but practically missing the planet (har har).
Six-year-old Dennis (Bobby Coleman) is an abandoned, socially inept, snot-nosed little brat who spends all his time in a cardboard box believing that he's from Mars on a mission to collect everything interesting he sees so he can…I don't know…make a sequel to Everything is Illuminated. The movie doesn't really care to answer this basic question that Dennis uses to justify his kleptomania every fucking chance he gets, but that's ok because he's getting adopted anyway by David (John Cusack), a science-fiction writer who…wants to be the father for a whack job for some reason. The movie doesn't really care to answer that basic question either, but fuck your Earthly logic anyway. This is about an alien.
Knowing Dennis has a lotta bit of a mental problem (but never actually getting him the help he needs for some logical Martian reason), child services keeps a close eye on the relationship between David and Dennis and pretty much ignores everything that real child service bureaus would blow the whistle immediately before the mentally unstable schizophrenic does serious damage to himself. Martian Child never made things realistically difficult; it just made Dennis get away with being even more annoying. By the way, I still hate Dennis. Not a good sign for a movie.
Like K-Pax, Martian Child adds to the mystery a little bit by having Dennis perform "tricks" that may suggest he has some sort of un-Earthly power, but unlike K-Pax, these amazing feats are quickly brushed aside like Venkman in Ghostbusters zapping the kid who shows true ESP ability because there's a hot girl in the same room. Too often does this movie shoot down the fantasy that Dennis might actually be a Martian, only to change its mind and decide that the stupid kid can all of a sudden "taste color" or be "out-of-this-world obnoxious." It gave you no reason to care, no reason to be sympathetic, and really no reason to like Dennis at all. In fact, I still don't like the little shit (can't you tell?).
The movie was cute enough, but it's hard to not be when it's focused around a loopy little dork and John Cusack acting half his age to try and provide a comfortable atmosphere for his hopefully-future-son. Like stupid kitten videos on YouTube, even if you despise their reason for being, it's hard to not watch them and say "awww," and those are pretty much the moments that Martian Child was full of. It was as deep as the kiddie pool where these two characters swam and its warmth came from the yellow cowardly piss that was its concept exploration. You'd think for a movie with science fiction written all over it, exploring the unknown was something it wouldn't be afraid of, but alas, this had about as much creativity as a Lego kit where everything was pre-built and then glued together.
I had higher hopes for this, significantly higher hopes and before I wrote this review, I actually planned on giving this movie 7 dustbusters out of 10, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all the things that built it up to that point where pretty much givens. Shit forced in there hoping that its big puppy dog eyes would get it out of trouble like a poodle whimpering at you after shitting all over your bed. Well, fuck you poodle, that's not how we do things on Mars! 6 dustbusters out of 10 and go back to your fucking cardboard box!
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