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Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today.

Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films.

Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com/user/jsjkim, and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReThinkReviews. ReThink Reviews’ theme song is by Restavrant.

Mars Needs Moms

The new CG 3D animated film Mars Needs Moms is based on a children’s book by Berkeley Breathed, who some of you may know as the creator of the beloved Bloom County comic strip. Unfortunately, one of the producers of Mars Needs Moms is Robert Zemeckis, who’s previous work includes making a highly profitable mess out of the beloved children’s book The Polar Express, which used nascent performance capture technology that created characters with dead eyes and mask-like faces, and bloated an elegant story to feature length with noisy, pointless action.

While the technology has clearly improved, Mars Needs Moms suffers from the same flaws. But the film does make some interesting observations about parenting here on earth.

In the film, an authoritarian matriarchal Martian society is desperate to find earthling moms with good parenting skills to use as templates to program the army of nannybots that raises their young. Milo, a 9-year-old performed by Seth Green, has such a mom, though he bristles under her authority, even telling her in a moment of anger that he wished he never had a mom. But when Milo’s wish is granted and his mom is kidnapped by Martians, Milo travels to Mars to bring her back.

Unfortunately, this means teaming up with an irritating human named Gribble, performed by Dan Fogler, who grew up in Mars’ trash dump, and a sympathetic Martian named Ki, performed by Elisabeth Arnois, who has been inspired by a 60s-era TV show to speak in hippie slang and promote flower power, which is about as annoying as you’d imagine.

But what about the film’s view on parenting? Milo’s dad, who you only see briefly, travels for work and is apparently the one who takes Milo on fun outings, leaving Milo’s mom, performed by Joan Cusack, in the unenviable role of disciplinarian and taskmaster — a recognition that it’s usually moms who do the difficult, unglamorous job of day-to-day parenting while many dads just show up for playtime. This dynamic is taken to an extreme on Mars, which is ruled by a decrepit female dictator known simply as the Supervisor who forbids fun, emotion and color, while male Martians are sent to the planet’s trash heap and deemed worthless for only wanting to “dance and play.”

Milo’s true journey isn’t to the red planet and back, but to learn to appreciate the often thankless work of being a good parent, and that unlike the Supervisor, his mom’s discipline comes out of love. And nowhere is a mother’s love better illustrated than in a beautiful and wordless moment late in the film, that, I’ll admit, got me pretty choked up.

But this instance of authentic emotion is one of the only bright spots in an otherwise soulless, charmless effort that seems to say that you should be nice to your mom lest she be kidnapped and destroyed. If it takes an alien abduction to get a kid to take out the garbage, moms are in more trouble than we thought.

Mars Needs Moms is rated PG and is in theaters now.