Did anybody see Mars Needs Moms besides me? Sweet suffering Hayley Mills, what a disaster. Here's Zemeckis' formula for kid-movie success: first, make a movie for kids that's about a kid who's mom is abducted, sedated, and subjected to torturous experiments by aliens -- because, you know, kids are totally secure and could never be scared by the thought of their mother being kidnapped by monsters. Second, people the story with completely unlikeable characters -- a spoiled, asshole tweener "hero" whom you'll have an instant urge to slap stupid; the whining, nagging helicopter mom-slash-victim; a sweaty fat guy with Asperger's as a "good guy"; and a planet full of dirty, dangerous-looking Afro-Rastafarian Martians. Third, create a plot so convoluted and incomprehensible that Thomas fucking Pynchon couldn't figure it out. And finally, "animate" it using that creepy mo-cap process that makes every face look like that of a soulless, reanimated corpse (no pun intended). Put it all together and you get the biggest box office bomb in the history of movies. GG Disney!
This movie isn't just bad -- it's literally so bad it's scary. The characters' horrible, dead-eyed faces, the scenes of the kid's unconscious mom being brain-drained by aliens, the aforementioned sweaty fat guy with Asperger's -- it's pure nightmare fuel. My normally-unflappable four-year-old boy held my hand in a death-grip of terror the entire time we were in front of the screen; after about twenty minutes, I asked him if he wanted to leave, and he was more than ready. "Too scary, Papa." Yeah, that's what I like to hear after spending $26 on tickets and popcorn! GG Zemeckis!
Showbiz is so effed. Hollywood (etc.) is full of hyper-talented, hyper-creative types who could make the world happy with their films and so forth, yet who toil away for years in go-nowhere jobs on the cubicle floors until they give up on the dream. Meanwhile, two floors up on the Executive Level, there are other people who are getting paid fortunes to make big decisions, yet who are completely incompetent to make those decisions. And yet they get paid anyway! Think about it: the Mouse dropped a cool hundred and fifty million bucks on this sinker. That's one hundred and fifty million buckadingdongs. It'll earn back maybe -- maybe! -- a tenth of that. Yet some guy in a suit who makes more in a year than I'll net in my entire lifetime signed off on it -- and they'll keep paying him that fortune even though he was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Now you tell me there's any justice in this world.
Oh, well, at least they shuttered Zemeckis' "animation" studio for good. Thanks for wasting my money and scaring my kid shitless, Disney! WTG!
This movie isn't just bad -- it's literally so bad it's scary. The characters' horrible, dead-eyed faces, the scenes of the kid's unconscious mom being brain-drained by aliens, the aforementioned sweaty fat guy with Asperger's -- it's pure nightmare fuel. My normally-unflappable four-year-old boy held my hand in a death-grip of terror the entire time we were in front of the screen; after about twenty minutes, I asked him if he wanted to leave, and he was more than ready. "Too scary, Papa." Yeah, that's what I like to hear after spending $26 on tickets and popcorn! GG Zemeckis!
Showbiz is so effed. Hollywood (etc.) is full of hyper-talented, hyper-creative types who could make the world happy with their films and so forth, yet who toil away for years in go-nowhere jobs on the cubicle floors until they give up on the dream. Meanwhile, two floors up on the Executive Level, there are other people who are getting paid fortunes to make big decisions, yet who are completely incompetent to make those decisions. And yet they get paid anyway! Think about it: the Mouse dropped a cool hundred and fifty million bucks on this sinker. That's one hundred and fifty million buckadingdongs. It'll earn back maybe -- maybe! -- a tenth of that. Yet some guy in a suit who makes more in a year than I'll net in my entire lifetime signed off on it -- and they'll keep paying him that fortune even though he was wrong, wrong, wrong.
Now you tell me there's any justice in this world.
Oh, well, at least they shuttered Zemeckis' "animation" studio for good. Thanks for wasting my money and scaring my kid shitless, Disney! WTG!
