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Mars Needs Moms

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Mars Needs Moms

PG

Released Mar 11, 2011

1h 28m

Kids & Family

Comedy

Sci-Fi

Adventure

Animation

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Popcornmeter

35%

Tomatometer

113 Reviews

40%

Popcornmeter

25,000+ Ratings

Milo is a 9-year-old boy who has a lot on his mind; he has monster movies to watch, comic books to read and all other kinds of fun stuff to accomplish. He definitely does not have time to do homework or eat his vegetables. He's getting tired of his mom nagging him to do these things, and his mom is tired of nagging. But just as Milo is telling his mom that life would be more fun without her, Martians kidnap her. Milo stows away on their spaceship, determined to launch a rescue.

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Critics Consensus

The cast is solid and it's visually well-crafted, but Mars Needs Moms suffers from a lack of imagination and heart.

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Leonard Maltin

IndieWire

As with a good live-action movie, it all begins with the script, and this one is solid-well thought-out, briskly paced, funny and sweet. In the end, it's the finished film that matters, not the process...

Aug 12, 2011

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Jim Schembri

The Age (Australia)

What really sells this fabulous, kid-friendly 3D adventure to anybody over eight (no offense, kids) is its astonishing visuals, which uses motion-capture technology to a degree that surpasses what we saw in Avatar.

Rated: 4/5

Apr 13, 2011

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Jake Wilson

The Age (Australia)

The credited director is Simon Wells (The Time Machine), but the grotesque characters and dark action bear the Zemeckis stamp.

Rated: 1.5/5

Apr 13, 2011

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Brian Eggert

Deep Focus Review

An unsightly experience of motion-capture computer animation comprised of far too many so-called technological advances.

Rated: 1/4

Jul 31, 2023

Full Review

Richard Propes

TheIndependentCritic.com

A decent flick that could have been so much more.

Rated: 2.0/4.0

Sep 16, 2020

Full Review

Debbie Lynn Elias

Behind The Lens

I just love Simon Wells' sense of adventure and with Mars Needs Moms, he soars.

Nov 16, 2019

Full Review

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naim c

One of the ugliest movies I've watched. The mocap animation looks really bad, the character designs are worse and painful to watch, especially the aliens. The story itself was pretty bad and the movie didn't explain a lot of things. My eyes are still bleeding.

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

12/12/24

Full Review

Dale R

Based on a book by Berkeley Breathed, the mother of a young boy named Milo is abducted by Martians. The animation in this film was done by ImageMovers Digital by using motion capture and while the body movements worked, the face expressions did not work. This creates some off putting characters, though during the credits they show behind the scenes of how they captured the motion of the actors. The writing in this movie is horrible, none of the jokes land and the movie as a whole feels like it was improvised from beginning to end instead of storyboarded. The Martians do have an unique and interesting design and the animators did a great job on some backgrounds, especially the Earth ones. There are good reasons why this movie bombed in theaters, save yourself the headache and skip watching this movie.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

07/07/24

Full Review

Audience Member

“Visually well-crafted”… yeah right. Isn’t this the plot of the Jimmy Neutron movie?

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

06/13/24

Full Review

Артем Б

"Mars Needs Moms" can be characterized as one huge festering pimple on the reputation of Disney, from which the studio suffered massive financial losses, hit the reputation of Robert Zemeckis and thereby closed a bunch of potential projects. If you don't pay attention to the graphics, it was a bit of an interesting story, but the fact is that the shell (graphics) lost all the beauty and attractiveness of everything.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

05/01/24

Full Review

Platty the Perrypus W

I remember liking it as a kid but UNLIKE chicken little, shark tale, and kronk's new groove, I don't get why.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

01/17/24

Full Review

Banku M

I just watched the movie, I didn't like it.. AT ALL, the characters looked so bad, the animation looked gross… Everything about it was just wrong. I am so disappointed in Disney, who even decided that Mars Need Moms would be a great movie in the first place? I dislike it, I don't recommend it, and that's my conclusion.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

11/26/23

Full Review

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Simon Wells

Director

Seth Green

Milo

Dan Fogler

Gribble

Elisabeth Harnois

Ki

Joan Cusack

Mom

Mindy Sterling

Supervisor

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Synopsis

Milo is a 9-year-old boy who has a lot on his mind; he has monster movies to watch, comic books to read and all other kinds of fun stuff to accomplish. He definitely does not have time to do homework or eat his vegetables. He's getting tired of his mom nagging him to do these things, and his mom is tired of nagging. But just as Milo is telling his mom that life would be more fun without her, Martians kidnap her. Milo stows away on their spaceship, determined to launch a rescue.

Director: Simon Wells
Producer: Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke, Steve Starkey, Steven Boyd
Screenwriter: Simon Wells, Wendy Wells
Distributor: Walt Disney
Production Co: ImageMovers
Rating: PG (Sci-Fi Action and Peril)
Genre: Kids & Family, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Adventure, Animation
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Mar 11, 2011, Wide
Release Date (Streaming): Jan 1, 2014
Box Office (Gross USA): $21.4M
Runtime: 1h 28m

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