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(More customer reviews)MARTIAN CHILD was marketed incorrectly - that can be the major reason for its lack of success in the theatrical release. While all the multiplex theaters are overflowing with loud, coarse, raunchy, and special effects driven financial successes (with major exceptions, of course!), little meaningful and sensitive films such as this are submerged and don't last long. Should the name of the film have been different? Should the advertisements been better designed? Who knows, but for those who now have the opportunity to buy or rent MARTIAN CHILD, there is a special experience in store.
Based on the novel 'The Martian Child' by David Gerrold (beautifully adapted for the screen by Seth Bass and Jonathan Tolins), Director Menno Meyjes has gathered an exceptional cast to present this story about human needs and how we all find security in the warmth of other caring beings. David (John Cusack) is a successful science fiction writer who is a widower, still grieving for his wife. His agent Jeff (Oliver Platt), his sister Liz (Joan Cusack) and his wife's best friend Harlee (Amanda Peet) aid his 'convalescence', but David feels the need for a child. When social worker Sophie (Sophie Okonedo) calls David concerning an available strange little boy Dennis (Bobby Coleman) who believes he is from the planet Mars and hides inside a box, covered with sunscreen and dark glasses, David responds: he, after all, writes science fiction and is attracted to the idea that Dennis believes he is here from Mars on a mission. Against the advice of his practical sister, David agrees to take Dennis home, feeling that he is one of the few who can relate to Dennis' behavior.
Life at home is not easy, but with time David and Dennis bond and Dennis comes out of his box to become 'normal'. It is the prolonged journey on which David and Dennis embark that holds the meat of the story. Dennis has been deserted as a small child and finds security in believing he is a visiting Martian who will be 'taken home' to Mars when his mission to understand human beings is complete. David's persistent parenting (quoting Churchill's 'Never ever, ever ,ever, ever, ever give up'), while tested to the extreme, results in a bonding with Dennis that is heart wrenchingly beautiful. And how each of the characters' lives is changed by this extraordinary relationship brings the film to a touching close.
In addition to the fine performances by both Cusacks, Peet, Platt, and Okonedo, there are brief but noteworthy cameos by Anjelica Huston and Richard Schiff among others. This is a film that makes a major statement about parenting and single parenting in particular and does so with kindness, tenderness, and sincere emotion. Please see this film. Grady Harp, February 08
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MARTIAN CHILD - DVD Movie
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