Martian Child: Critic Reviews

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.

100 percent goo.

An occasionally schmaltzy but likable story of healing and redemption.

Martian Child feels artificially sweetened rather than genuinely moving.

One soggy slab of sentimental uplift.

Martian Child certainly isn't much fun, unless you were desperately awaiting K-PAX with a kid instead of Kevin Spacey.

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.

So bland and safe that it might appeal more directly to children than adults.

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.

Cusack carries this unabashed tearjerker.

A film so cloying it could have been processed from high-fructose corn syrup.

Director Menno Meyjes keeps the sci-fi suspense quotient up just enough to make the ending somewhat disappointingly pat.

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.

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?

Knockout performances by John Cusack and child actor Bobby Coleman help legitimize a whimsical but sententiously moralizing script.

Has enough wit and unpredictability to hold your attention.

[Cusack] just can't seem to conjure up a reservoir of emotions to make Martian Child human.

If all this is supposed to be so life-affirming, how come I envied the dead dog?

If you're allergic to schmaltz, bring a bottle of Benadryl along to Martian Child.

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.

Martian Child wants to make us cry. It nearly made me gag. This is an exercise in shameless and inept emotional manipulation.

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.

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.

Martian Child would like to be About a Boy (Who Thinks He's a Martian), but, disappointingly, it doesn't even come close.

Directed by Spielberg protege Menno Meyjes, Martian Child is contrived, but it works.