Movie Review: Martian Child

The movie Martian Child was released in late 2007, and I don't remember seeing anything about it at all and just happened to run across it on the shelves at the local Blockbuster video. I read the jacket info and saw that it starred John Cusack, one of my favorite actors, and figured it would be a good way to spend a lazy afternoon.

If you're a movie critic and watch movies for any other purpose than good heartwarming PG entertainment, then this is not the movie for you. Martian Child is one of the best movies I've seen in a long time, and I both laughed and cried all the way through it. The acting isn't superb or brilliant, but it's believable and the characters have a definite way of pulling you into the emotional rollercoaster that is thematic throughout the movie.

Martian Child is based on an autobiographical book by science-fiction writer David Gerrold, with some fictionalized cinematic twists thrown in. It's about a widowed writer David Gordon (John Cusack) who adopts an emotionally scarred orphan boy Dennis (Bobby Coleman) who thinks he is from Mars. The young actor Bobby Coleman does a fantastic job and is very believable in this role.

David and his wife were planning to adopt a child before she died but never did, so when David is contacted by a local children's home about adopting a "hard to place" child, he is emotionally torn. The social worker at the children's home feels that since David is a science fiction writer who writes stories about Mars, and Dennis thinks he is from Mars, that the two would make a good match. David isn't so sure and asks his sister Liz (Joan Cusack) her opinion, and she voices her concerns about it. I have to say that the scenes with Liz were some of the funniest and had me laughing out loud!