Review: Martian Child (2007)
The Story of a Man Becoming a Father...and a Boy Becoming a Son
The movie jumps right in so should the synopsis, David Gordon (John Cusack) is a science fiction writer who always sees himself as an outsider, and after the death of his wife, he decides to adopt a child in memory of plans they had originally before her death.
The child he ends up adopting is Dennis (Bobby Coleman), a little boy who is utterly convinced he is from Mars. The entire movie is a struggle between trying to be a typical family and struggling with the concept of conforming or being a little different.
Dennis is fighting the world because he fears being abandoned, which shines through in a stunning climax when David tries to talk Dennis down off the top of a building when Dennis believes the aliens are coming to take him home. But the child isn’t delusional; rather he’s desperate to find a way to deal with abandonment issues.
Analysis:
Overall this movie provides a heartwarming story about two people who are equally lost and looking to be found. Watching David (Cusack) reach out to this adopted boy is by far one of the best moments in the film. Dennis (Coleman) remains in a box, afraid of the UV rays from the sun, as time goes on, David lures the child out and eventually has him walking around feeling, at least a little more comfortable with the universe that surrounds him.
For a child who couldn’t have been older than twelve at the time, Coleman gives an excellent performance of a little boy who is just desperate to ignore the pain of being left behind. Though the audience never discovers why or when he was left, it becomes clear through his tale of “being from Mars” that he is just trying to find a way to escape it.
Meanwhile, David is the picture of patient up until the tail end of the movie, a science fiction writer; he’s working on his next piece and decides to hand a completely different story to his publisher. But when he hands over his manuscript of Martian Child to his publisher, before she reads it she asks “why can’t you just do what everyone asks.” Only a scene earlier David had asked the same thing of Dennis.
Alien-Boy:
Some may consider Dennis’ character to be delusional as he claims repeatedly he’s from the planet Mars, but there are more than a few moments in this movie that could leave the audience wondering “is he really an alien?” When Dennis and David are sitting in the car on the way back from a baseball game, Dennis says he made an alien wish, in this moment, he changes all the traffic lights from red to green. A few scenes later he states he can taste color, and proceeds to guess every color of M&Ms that David puts in his mouth while his eyes are closed.
In his own little way, Dennis proves that the world is an extraordinary place and where conforming and being “normal” or “typical” can be overrated. Perhaps the question at the end of this movie isn’t why Dennis believed he was from outer space, but how he came up with all these beautiful ideas of Mars, from the “talk” scene where he and David do a little dance back and forth across the living room, to the light scene, the movie leaves the audience wonder what exactly goes on in this little boy’s mind.
What do you think about this article?
More in Film & TV
Latest Articles