Popcorn? Check. 3-D glasses? Check. A theatre full of whining, hyperactive kids? Check. Low expectations? Check. Alright, Uncle Walt – show me what you got!
Enter Milo. Like most pre-teens, he has a hard life. He’s forced to take out the garbage, eat broccoli, and do all sorts of unpleasant, demeaning things on a daily basis by an evil suburban dictator: his mother. One night, after a particularly troublesome skirmish, he blurts out one of those lines that telegraph a major plot twist, about how much better his life would be if he didn’t have a mother. She gasps, sheds a tear and tugs at our heartstrings – then the villainous wench gets abducted by aliens. Filled with remorse, Milo races out of the house to look for her, discovers an archetypal phallic spaceship nearby and somehow manages to get inside – proving that there is at least one Disney ride that doesn’t require a two-hour wait.
On Mars a few minutes later (lucky he caught the express), Milo finds himself in the middle of an all-female society of narrow-waisted, bulbous-headed Martians, ruled over mercilessly by a bad-tempered matriarch (as we’re in the world of Disney we know she’s evil because she’s old, has a distinctly Asian visage and her face looks like a prune). Under her fascist rule, men are banished to a hellish netherworld (a vast garbage processing plant borrowed from Toy Story 3) and babies are raised by robot nannies – hence their need to raid suburbia and use a long, sharp brain probe to extricate a human mother’s maternal instincts. Or something.
Mars Needs Moms’ main attraction, aside from providing undiscriminating Disney junkies with another shot in the arm, is its use of state-of-the-art motion capture technology. At least, that’s my guess – they’re not likely to score many points with the hackneyed story, creaking soapbox or irritating characters vomiting clichés with a regularity you could set your watch to. The expressions on the characters’ faces, not to mention the dazzling landscapes of the fabled red planet, are indeed impressively detailed. However, like its superior animated competitor Rango, the creatures on Mars are more creepy than cute, and some scenes may be too intense for younger audiences (although of the two films Mars must have been less of a headache for the marketing department – for one thing, there are few jokes intended to hold the attention of mature audiences.
Disney teamed up with Robert Zemeckis’ production company for this, but it doesn’t look like they’re going to repeat the commercial success they had together with motion capture technology in films like A Christmas Carol or The Polar Express. In fact, development of Zemeckis’ remake of the Beatles phantasmagoria Yellow Submarine was halted when Disney realized Mars was going to bomb and take most of its $150 million budget with it. As if to pave the way for his ill-fated next project, Mars is infused with a half-baked psychedelic ethos, incorporating some rather incongruous imagery that is supposed to tie in with its simple-minded politics regarding ideas of child rearing and gender roles.
Sci-fi fans will either enjoy or resent the numerous similarities to films like Star Wars and the anachronistic futureworld setting that brings to mind 1984 – but in the end, this is a kid’s film, so don’t expect much subtlety in the satire. A handful of animation regulars, including Seth Green (The Family Guy), Joan Cusack (another loan from Toy Story 3) and Dan Fogler (Kung Fu Panda) try to keep their reputations afloat, but in the end, they won’t be much use if you’re the one stuck with a snotty 7-year-old hungry for their next Disney fix.
