Mars Needs Moms – Blu-ray Review

The Flick:

 

Before seeing Mars Needs Moms I had never read any of Berkeley Breathed’s books, but now I’m going to make it a point to pick all of them up so that I can read them to my children. Mars Needs Moms has a sense of wonder and enlightenment that is important for the development of young minds.

All children fight with their parents. It’s a common thread that links all of human kind together. Parents are there to make their children’s lives difficult. Clean your room, throw the trash, don’t fight with your sister. All examples of the difficult phrases parents use to help transition their children into adult hood. Also, evidently the type of phrases Martians use to pick a mother to abduct in order to harvest her maternal instincts. Basically, Milo (Seth Green) has a fight with his Mom (Joan Cusack) and Martians pick up on it and decide that his Mom is the perfect candidate for abduction. Milo sees the Martians take his Mom and hitches a ride to Mars in order to save her. While there he meets a friend, Gribble (Dan Fogler) and finds out the the Martians plan to transfer her maternal instincts into a bunch of robots used to raise the children of Mars. Of course this process is going to kill Mom, so Milo has to race against the clock to save his mother and grow up in the process.

Mars Needs Moms isn’t perfect. There are moments of lag in the story, and sometimes plot points are a little to familiar, but none of that stopped me from enjoying the flick. Writer/director Simon Wells was able to pull amazing motion capture performances out of his cast. I absolutely loved Gribble, and Milo was fantastic as the boy that truly learned his lesson. They even manage to liberate the Martians from themselves. I’m a sucker for solid children’s movies, and Mars Needs Moms is a rock solid flick.

The animation is by far some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. An incredible feat because a lot of the scenes are dark, but illuminated just enough to offer up a kind of beauty not usually seen in animated features. Mars Needs Moms is a fun movie with a heart of gold set in a lush and beautiful world that captures the imagination. It is absolutely a killer film.

The Blu-ray:

 

Audio/Video: Disney’s DTS-HD Master 7.1 tracks came in loud and clear and the video is gorgeous. The darks are near perfect, and the landscapes are crisp. Mars has never looked or sounded better.

Special Features

 

Deleted Scenes: I’ve never been a huge fan of deleted scenes and these didn’t change my opinion of them. There are some completely animated scenes, and some not-so-completely animated scenes that make up this collection of left overs. If your a fan of the deleted scene it’s worth watching, but I wasn’t all that impressed.

Life on Mars: The Full Motion-Capture Experience: I really enjoyed this feature that shows the cast working on the movie and acting their parts out with the motion-capture suits on. Entertaining and interesting.

Martian 101: A short snipped where the Martian language is discussed.

Fun with Seth: Seth Green acts like Seth Green. A quick and fun feature that is worth watching.

The Flick: Rating:

The Blu-ray: Rating: