Life from Mars

>> Martian Child is a schmaltzy but
likeable story about being different

by HILLARY BRENHOUSE

Based on David Gerrold’s semi-autobiographical novella, Martian Child manages in its greater moments to move beyond mindless schmaltz—a real feat for a story about a widower determined to bond with a hard-to-place foster kid.

John Cusack plays David, a neurotic science fiction author and former child misfit mulling over his late wife’s dream to adopt. (A change from Gerrold’s single gay male protagonist.) Overcoming cold feet, Cusack decides to take in Dennis (10-year-old Bobby Coleman), an eccentric orphan with such deep-seated abandonment issues, he insists that he’s a Martian on some sort of anthropological mission.

It takes time, extra-strength sunblock and a pair of oversized shades to lure Dennis out from underneath a cardboard box, where he regularly takes refuge from the sun. While David is supported in his crack at parenting by best friend and eventual love interest Harlee (Amanda Peet), his sister Liz (Joan Cusack), a harried mother of two boys, spouts words of warning.

Overly pointed lessons about conformity and individualism are reiterated ad nauseum as school administrators and social services discourage David from joining Dennis in fantasyland. Martian Child, for all of its quirks, cannot completely escape moralizing mush. In a ridiculous book launch party scene, David’s publisher (Anjelica Huston) and agent (Oliver Platt) ask outright why he can’t just be what they want him to be.

How certain parts of this soppy script survived the final cut is unimaginable. Director Menno Meyjes’s slice of comic melodrama is remarkably successful when it surrenders to whimsy—like Dennis’s neat Martian line dance—but crashes back to Earth with a noisy thud every time the value of being different is hip-hip-hoorayed.

Ultimately, sensational performances by Cusack and Coleman overshadow the hackneyed bits. Cusack, likeably aloof and restrained, never solicits audience pity. His little co-star, who sports a weight belt to keep from floating back to Mars, plays vulnerable and offbeat without indulging in an excessively sentimental version of his character. Unsmiling and diffident for the most part, Coleman is one discerning child actor.

Though it may lack the pathos of Grace Is Gone, Cusack’s other recent single-parenting drama, this uneven flick’s hold deepens as its leads relate over their shared state of alienation.

Martian Child opens this
Friday, Nov. 2

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