Martian Child Reviews
Top Critic
The entire cast is fully committed to this squishily sentimental tale, which is especially impressive given that it's the kind of generic dramedy you'll swear you've seen a thousand times before.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Has enough wit and unpredictability to hold your attention.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Martian Child wants to make us cry. It nearly made me gag. This is an exercise in shameless and inept emotional manipulation.
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| Original Score: 2/4
If all this is supposed to be so life-affirming, how come I envied the dead dog?
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
It's off in many directions -- false in its details, false in its relationships, false in its emotions -- but probably the first and worst thing that needs to be said about it is that it's also overlong and dull.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Cusack and Coleman make this whimsical trip worthwhile.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
There is something disingenuous and calculating about the work of his director and composer.
What if Lloyd Dobler grew up, gave up kickboxing for writing books about space battles and adopted a kid? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't miss it for the world.
| Original Score: 3/4
Martian Child would like to be About a Boy (Who Thinks He's a Martian), but, disappointingly, it doesn't even come close.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Director Menno Meyjes keeps the sci-fi suspense quotient up just enough to make the ending somewhat disappointingly pat.
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| Original Score: C+
The movie can also be accused of its own sugar overdose as director Menno Meyjes piles on every clichéd situation.
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| Original Score: 2/4
So bland and safe that it might appeal more directly to children than adults.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Cusack carries this unabashed tearjerker.
If you're allergic to schmaltz, bring a bottle of Benadryl along to Martian Child.
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| Original Score: 2/4
An occasionally schmaltzy but likable story of healing and redemption.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Before long, the story's conceit -- a loud-and-clear metaphor for the ways in which we all sometimes feel alien when it comes to human relationships -- just becomes wearying.
A film so cloying it could have been processed from high-fructose corn syrup.
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| Original Score: 2/4
It either is stiff and dry or it piles on the schmaltz in absurd amounts. In that sense, it offers the worst of both worlds.
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| Original Score: 2/5
In December, Cusack will be back on screen in Grace Is Gone, another portrait of a grieving widower struggling to raise children. Viewers may want to hold out to see him in a film that maintains its sensitivity all the way through.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Martian Child feels artificially sweetened rather than genuinely moving.
[Cusack] just can't seem to conjure up a reservoir of emotions to make Martian Child human.
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| Original Score: 2/5
Menno Meyjes handles this Nick Hornby-esque story like a special Oprah episode. Throw in some muted magical realism, and you've got everything you need for a fine performance undercut by banal storytelling.
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| Original Score: 2/6
Cusack and Coleman are on screen together most of the movie, and the fact that they don't completely overstay their welcome amid the maudlin action says a lot for the restraint they bring to the characters.
The problem with Martian Child is that it wants to be a story about outcasts, but Dennis doesn't come off as a cute little rebel.
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| Original Score: C+
Martian Child was directed by Menno Meyjes, who wrote the screenplay for The Color Purple, and written by the distinguished team Jonathan Tolins and Seth Bass. How could so many good people go so wrong?
Martian Child certainly isn't much fun, unless you were desperately awaiting K-PAX with a kid instead of Kevin Spacey.
Those who stick with Martian Child won't entirely avoid mush, but they will find terrific performances by John Cusack, as the parental unit, and 10-year-old Bobby Coleman, as the self-proclaimed extraterrestrial.
Knockout performances by John Cusack and child actor Bobby Coleman help legitimize a whimsical but sententiously moralizing script.
