Mars Needs Moms

Based on the book by Berkeley Breathed, Mars Needs Moms is a perfectly adequate minor Disney animated feature.  Using the same stop motion affect that Robert Zemeckis (a producer here) implemented with such facial creepiness in The Polar Express, that was later perfected with Avatar, this sci\fi adventure tale, while perhaps not a technological breakthrough in the sub-genre, is competently rendered.  Here we have a young kid named Milo (voiced with various tweaking by Seth Green), an average hyper-active youth with a long suffering mother (Joan Cusack, whose warmth transcends any techno nonsense), an absentee father, and a wandering imagination.  He's the kid out of every Disney picture, or Steven Spielberg film for that matter.  But this evening, something unexpected happens-- Milo's mother is held captive by intergalactic something or others, and after a fight where he said something he instantly regrets, Milo chasing the saucer and goes along for the ride; destination: Mars.  It appears the red plants needs moms, not to parent the little ones so much as continuing a tradition of strong, obedient work and order-- Milo's mom was chosen because she was good at getting her son to take out the trash.  There's doom afoot and Milo must save his dear mum and learn some valuable lessons along the way.  He also meets another Earthling, one with a sad past, played with consistent irritation by Dan Fogler (Take Me Home Tonight), and walks through a barrage of sets that seem borrowed by WALL-E and Tron, but there's a slight charm throughout as well; it's muddled and bit uneven, and very desperate to please, but a nice B-quality sense of nostalgia that makes it go down quite nicely.  B-