Mars Needs Moms

Mars Needs Moms
Directed by	Simon Wells
Screenplay by	Simon Wells Wendy Wells
Story by	Wendy Wells
Produced by	Robert Zemeckis Jack Rapke Steve Starkey Steven Boyd
Starring	Seth Green Tom Everett Scott Joan Cusack Elisabeth Harnois Dan Fogler Dee Bradley Baker Mindy Sterling Jon St. John
Narrated by	Seth Green
Cinematography	Robert Presley
Music by	John Powell
Production company	ImageMovers Digital
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures (US/Worldwide) E1 Entertainment (UK)
Release date	March 11, 2011 (2011-03-11)
Running time	88 minutes
Country	Template:Film US
Language	English
Budget	$150 million
Box office	$36,210,295

Mars Needs Moms is a 3D computer-animated sci-fi adventure comedy film directed by Simon Wells and based on a book of the same title by Berkeley Breathed. The film is centered around a nine-year-old boy who after been grounded, realizes he was wrong to be mad at his mother, and has to rescue her after she is abducted by Martians. It was released on 11 March 2011 by Walt Disney Pictures. The film stars both Seth Green (performance capture) and newcomer Seth Dusky (voice) as the main character Milo, and was the final product of Robert Zemeckis' studio ImageMovers Digital. The title is a humorous twist on the title of American International Pictures' Mars Needs Women (1966).

Plot

Nine-year-old Milo (Seth Green, voice-over by Seth Dusky) is just beginning summer vacation, and his father (Tom Everett Scott) is leaving for a business trip. While Milo is wanting his summer to be a fun one, his mother (Joan Cusack) assigns him chores and tasks like taking out the trash. At dinnertime, Milo is given broccoli. His mother has a "no broccoli, no TV" rule which Milo cleverly evades by feeding the broccoli to his pet cat. When Milo's mother finds the cat throwing up from the broccoli, she grounds him and sends him to bed early. After a heated argument with his mother, Milo wishes that he never had a mom. Later that night, his wish comes true when his mother is abducted by Martians who plan to steal her "momness" to rear their own young.

Milo's quest to save his mom involves stowing away on a spaceship, navigating an elaborate, multi-level planet and taking on the alien nation and their leader, the Supervisor (Mindy Sterling). With the help of tech-savvy subterranean-dwelling earthling Gribble (Dan Fogler), his bionic underground pet Two-Cat (Dee Bradley Baker), and rebellious Martian Ki (Elisabeth Harnois), Milo finds his way back to his mom.

The Martians are born from the ground every five years. By an automated process, robots separate the males from the females. The males are cast into the garbage dump (where they live a primitive existence). Each female is placed in the care of a nanny robot. Each batch of nannies requires an earthling mother to provide their maternal programing. The process which will download each mother's memories results in her death.

The females are raised by the robot nannies to join a highly regimented matriarchal society; highly technological and free of physical affection. The Supervisor constructed this society to be freed from the burdens of child rearing.

At the beginning of the film, Martians observe Earth mothers, passing up those who are too indulgent or unable to control their children. They select Milo's mother based on her ability to command Milo to take out the trash.

Upon arrival on Mars, Milo is locked up in a jail cell, but manages to escape down a garbage chute where he meets Gribble. Gribble helps him devise a plan to save Milo's mom and get her back to Earth before Earth's night is up. Unfortunately, the plan goes awry at a Martian checkpoint, when Milo is exposed and the troops raid Gribble's hideout, but Milo is able to escape. While hiding from the guards, Milo runs in to Ki, whose been spraying graffiti in the form of flowers throughout the underground city, having been inspired by a 1960s Earth TV show.

Once Milo makes it back to Gribble's hideout and discovers the truth about Gribble's name (being George Ribble), Gribble confesses to Milo on how he wound up on Mars: twenty five years ago, back in the 1980s, the Martians selected Gribble's mother as a fine example to program their nannybots. Like Milo, Gribble stowed away, but failed to rescue his mother in time and was stranded on Mars ever since, but finding company in the form of a male Martian and robot.

After Ki manages to locate Milo and Gribble in an untouched part of the Martian underground world, they come across an ancient cave painting that showed Martian families were like Earth families in the past. After evading the guards and capturing a spaceship, Milo manages to wake up his mother, and save her before the download destroys her, but in the process of escaping out onto the Martian surface, Milo trips and breaks his space helmet.

As Milo begins to choke in the unbreathable Martian atmosphere, Milo's mother gives him her space helmet. Although Milo's life is saved, the life of his mother has now been put at stake. Before the eyes of the Martians, Gribble (not wanting to see another Earth boy lose his mother) manages to find the space helmet he'd attempted to save his mom with and gives it to Milo's mother, showing the Martians the one thing they'd overlooked about Earth moms: love for their children, in which Milo apologizes to his mother about the argument. Afterwards, just as it looks like the Supervisor will recapture the Earthlings, Ki reveals the photo of the ancient cave painting and the Supervisor's deception to the soldiers, causing them to turn against the Supervisor.

With the Supervisor in prison, Ki and Gribble return Milo and his mother to Earth, just before Milo's dad returns home. Having nowhere else to go and having exposed feelings for Ki, Gribble decides to stay on Mars and returns there. Milo then takes out the trash before his mother asks him to, but secretly disintegrates it with a Martian weapon.

For the first half of the ending credits, under the new leadership of Gribble and Ki, the male and female Martians work together in raising their young, while the Supervisor is stuck with nanny duty. Gribble manages to contact Milo and let him know how he is by using the Spirit rover as a communication station. The second half of the credits has a look behind the scenes with the voice actors speaking the lines of the characters they play. And then after everyone returns home mars decides to attack earth and everyone dies because our puny military cannot defend us. The End.

Cast

• Seth Green as Milo (motion capture/narration)
• Seth Dusky as Milo (voice only)
• Joan Cusack as Milo's mom
• Tom Everett Scott as Milo's dad
• Elisabeth Harnois as Ki
• Dan Fogler as Gribble
• Mindy Sterling as The Supervisor
• James Earl Jones as Ja Mi
• Breckin Meyer as Spangro
• Billy Dee Williams as Myzic
• Kevin Cahoon as Wingnut
• Ryan, Robert and Raymond Ochoa as Martian Hatchlings
• Liam and Edgar Wells as Robot Martians
• Dee Bradley Baker as Two-Cat

Production

After spending six weeks outfitted in a special sensor-equipped performance-capture suit while simultaneously performing Milo's lines, Seth Green's voice sounded too mature for the character and was replaced with that of 11-year-old actor Seth R. Dusky.

Promotion

The first theatrical trailer for the movie became available online 23 November 2010 from Yahoo! Movies and premiered with Tangled, along with a shorter version of the trailer premiering with Tron: Legacy. A second theatrical trailer was released 18 February 2011, again by Yahoo! Movies. A third was released on the official website.

Reception

Critical response

The film was met with generally mixed to negative reviews by critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 40% based on reviews from 70 critics, and reports a rating average of 5.2 out of 10. The critical consensus was: "The cast is solid and it's visually well-crafted, but Mars Needs Moms suffers from a lack of imagination and heart."

At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film received an average score of 49% based on 22 reviews.

Box office

Mars Needs Moms earned only $1,725,000 on its first day, for a weekend total of $6,825,000. This was the 12th worst opening ever for a film playing in 3000+ theaters. Due to its very high budget of $150 million, the film is a box office bomb. On 14 March 2011, Brook Barnes of The New York Times commented that it was rare for a Disney-branded film to do so badly, with the reason for its poor performance being the subject (a mother kidnapped from her child), the style of animation, which crosses the uncanny valley threshold, and negative word of mouth on social networks, along with releasing it on the same week as Battle: Los Angeles which had more hype with the general movie goers. Barnes concluded, "Critics and audiences alike, with audiences voicing their opinions on Twitter, blogs and other social media, complained that the Zemeckis technique can result in character facial expressions that look unnatural. Another common criticism is that Mr. Zemeckis focuses so much on technological wizardry that he neglects storytelling."

As of 1 April 2011, the domestic gross was about $19 million and foreign gross was $14 million.

External links

• Official website
• Mars Needs Moms at IMDb
• Template:Allmovie title
• Mars Needs Moms at Rotten Tomatoes
• Mars Needs Moms at Metacritic