I'm a big fan of movies about grown-ups and children reaching across the age barrier and getting along with one another. I am also a big fan of movies about adults who happen to have siblings of the opposite gender. (There are lots of movies about adult brothers, and lots of movies about adult sisters, but very few about men and their sisters, or about women and their brothers.) And I can even remember how, when I was seven years old, I spent a day or two telling people that I was actually from Mars, and that the rocket which brought me was buried beneath a swing in a nearby park. So a movie like Martian Child—starring real-life siblings John and Joan Cusack as fictitious siblings, one of whom is thinking of adopting a boy who claims to have come from the Red Planet—ought to be a real treat, right? Alas, it isn't, quite.

Bobby Coleman as Dennis, John Cusack as David

Bobby Coleman as Dennis, John Cusack as David

The premise does have potential, though. John Cusack plays David, a widower whose wife wanted a family; now that she is gone, he thinks he should adopt a child and make his late wife's dream come true. He can literally afford to look after a child all by himself, because he is a best-selling science-fiction author, and Sophie (Sophie Okenedo), the social worker he turns to for advice, suggests that he take a look at Dennis (Bobby Coleman)—a six-year-old who has been through so many foster homes that, as a defense mechanism, he insists he is visiting from another planet and has come to Earth to study human beings and their ways. Perhaps David, with his sci-fi background, can connect with Dennis and bring him out of his shell.

It may or may not help that David himself was "weird" when he was young, at least according to his sister Liz (Joan Cusack), who has children of her own and often takes the opportunity to remind David that parenting is hard. In any case, the relationship between fantasy and reality, and the ways parents work through their own childhoods while raising their children, can be fertile ground for drama.

Joan Cusack as Liz

Joan Cusack as Liz

So why does Martian Child not work? Partly because it feels too much like a movie, even though a title card tells us it is based on true events. The film is adapted from a semi-autobiographical novel by David Gerrold, who may be best known for writing the classic Star Trek episode "The Trouble with Tribbles," but the film tweaks some of the facts and does a few other things that give it a contrived, formulaic feel.

For one thing, the film gives David not only a dead wife but a potential love interest in her friend Harlee (Amanda Peet), a plot element that seems unnecessary even before you learn that both the real-life Gerrold and his alter ego in the original book are gay. (Gerrold lives in California, where single gay men are legally allowed to adopt.) For another, there are a couple of scenes in which Dennis makes very tiny gestures that almost seem to confirm his claim to have special Martian powers; these scenes can certainly be explained rationally, but there is still just a whiff of K-Pax (the movie starring Kevin Spacey as a would-be alien) about them, and for a few seconds you wonder if the film wants us to think Dennis might really be an alien.

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Amanda Peet as Harlee

Amanda Peet as Harlee

There is also a subplot in which David is pressured by his agent, Jeff (Oliver Platt), to produce another instalment in his best-selling sci-fi series—but David is distracted by the child in his house, and finds he would rather write a book about being an adoptive parent, instead. This ultimately leads to a meeting with the publisher, Mimi (Anjelica Huston), in which she baldly states, "Why can't you just be what we want you to be?" Maybe major publishers really do talk to their top authors like that, but it still sounds like the sort of extremely on-the-nose line a screenwriter came up with just so there would be no doubt in anyone's mind, especially David's, that spending time with your child is better than kissing heartless, soulless corporate butt.

Although Martian Child was made first—it was reportedly shot over two years ago—it cannot help but echo other recent films. Superficially, it is the second film this season, following The Game Plan, to feature a montage in which a man and the child who has come into his life bond while Electric Light Orchestra's "Mr. Blue Sky" plays on the soundtrack. More significantly, it comes hot on the heels of Lars and the Real Girl, in which an entire town plays along with a man's childlike belief that a life-size doll is his girlfriend, in the hope that they can draw him out of this delusion.

Dennis tells people that he's from Mars

Dennis tells people that he's from Mars

But where Lars was, itself, something of a bright-eyed fantasy, Martian Child hints at how even children have to deal with some very serious issues, and how imaginary lives can mask deeper problems that surface in other ways. Dennis is not only living in a world of make-believe; he also steals things from the other children, and from David, and if the movie downplays the extent to which Dennis is a "problem child," it at least gives us a taste of what David has to deal with. Paradoxically, the movie about the child is more mature, in this regard, than Lars, the movie about the adult.

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That said, the film, directed by Menno Meyjes (whose last film was the young-Hitler movie Max) from a script by Seth E. Bass and Jonathan Tollins, still feels lazily conventional. There are truths to be had here, but much of the film still rings false.

Talk About It

Discussion starters
  1. How does the imagination help us deal with reality? When should we indulge a child's fantasy, and when should we correct it? How can we tell the difference?
  2. David's publisher asks him, "Why can't you just be what we want you to be?" Are there any parallels between her attitude toward David and the attitude that David and the other adults have toward Dennis? Is it wrong to want someone to be something other than what they are? What if the person has deep problems? How do we encourage change for the other person's good, rather than our own?
  3. Harlee says all the interesting people tend to have had dysfunctional childhoods. Do you agree? Is it good to be "interesting"? Is it worth having a "dysfunctional" background? Is it possible to be "interesting" without such a background?
  4. Dennis and David discuss whether it is good to fit in and be normal. What do you think? How should we straddle the line between fitting in and being ourselves? Can we say that Dennis is "being himself" when he hides behind his Martian faç ade?
  5. David says he wants to raise a child partly because his wife wanted to, but also because he wants to do something "meaningful." Is his writing not "meaningful"? Is it "meaningful" in a different sort of way? How would you define "meaningful"?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Martian Child is rated PG for thematic material (Dennis is a "problem child" who steals from other people and pretends he comes from Mars) and mild language (about half a dozen instances of the names God or Jesus being spoken in vain; on one occasion, a man does this in front of a child, and the child replies, somewhat precociously, "Jesus is important, but other religions are just as relevant").

What other Christian critics are saying:

Martian Child
Our Rating
2 Stars - Fair
Average Rating
 
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Mpaa Rating
PG (for thematic elements and mild language)
Genre
Directed By
Menno Meyjes
Run Time
1 hour 46 minutes
Cast
John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Bobby Coleman
Theatre Release
November 02, 2007 by New Line Cinema
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