REVIEWS NEWS INTERVIEWS OTHER

(1 - 25) of 25 OFCS Rating: 36% Rotten Page   1   "An amusing and heartfelt exploration of the ups and downs involved when adopting a child -- in this case, one who insists he's from another planet."   ReelTalk Movie Reviews   Betty Jo Tucker C "It's a largely dreary time at the movies and offers next to nothing for the kids that it's advertising to."   FromTheBalcony   Bill Clark 2.5/5 "Maudlin, mawkish, and slightly misunderstood itself, Martian Child is the perfect example of good intentions wrapped in Hollywood-lite logistics."   PopMatters   Bill Gibron C "It's a well-intended psychological drama, but Meyjes is too afraid to permit the film any darkness...a patchy creation, bouncing between sincere questions of homestead stability and fluffy sitcom montages set to ELO hits."   DVDTalk.com   Brian Orndorf B- "John Cusack's favored co-actors (Oliver Platt, Joan Cusack, and Angelica Huston) add color to a sweet movie that intermittently gets bogged down by poor pacing."   ColeSmithey.com   Cole Smithey "While David imagines other worlds for profit, Martian Child crash-lands on this one."   PopMatters   Cynthia Fuchs 2.5/4 "Manipulative to an almost absurd degree..."   Reel Film Reviews   David Nusair 2/4 "Heartfelt, but uninspired, the film follows a plodding, predictable path that does not deviate for a second from what the viewer expects."   TheMovieBoy.com   Dustin Putman B "It's sweet and lovely and honest, and it made me laugh and cry, and John Cusack and the little boy, Bobby Coleman, are fantastic, and I want them to move next door and be my brother and nephew, respectively."   EricDSnider.com   Eric D. Snider B- "Part of the reason it works is that the film at least tries to make the Kid something other than a face you'd see on a cereal box."   Film Blather   Eugene Novikov 2/4 "Unfortunately for Martian Child this has more maple sap pouring out of it than a neglected Vermont tree looking for a good tapping."   TheWorldJournal.com   Frank Ochieng C- "Hobbled by its ham-fisted effort to strum our heartstrings."   One Guy's Opinion   Frank Swietek 5/5 "A comedy masterwork that touches the heart with its portrait of the survival tactics of an abandoned orphan and the loving ministrations of a widowed science fiction writer who adopts him."   Spirituality and Practice   Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat 2/4 "Martian Child wants to make us cry. It nearly made me gag. This is an exercise in shameless and inept emotional manipulation."   ReelViews   James Berardinelli 2/4 "John Cusack is the only bright spot in an otherwise sentimentally sloppy drama that telegraphs its plot points with a blinding laser beam."   Palo Alto Weekly   Jeanne Aufmuth 1.5/5 "if you like these emotionally-brittle family dramas, you'll eat this film up. But for a confirmed cynic like myself, it was torture to sit through the movie"   Film School Rejects   Kevin Carr "This is, wonderfully, a smart and snappy -- never sappy -- portrait of a budding parent-and-kid romance, and a lovely ode to nonconformity, to being your own person even if the rest of the world has some issues with that."   Flick Filosopher   MaryAnn Johanson C "My heart was ready to be warmed. But it never got above room temperature."   Beliefnet   Nell Minow 1/4 "The primary obstacle to enjoying any moment of Martian Child is Dennis, a little creature whose habits never feel like anything other than groan-worthy screenwriter contrivances aimed at cheaply eliciting audience waterworks."   Slant Magazine   Nick Schager C+ "What works is Cusack and Coleman. When they are on screen together something interesting always seems to happen."   Laramie Movie Scope   Robert Roten C "A story that has me checking the time, frequently, is telling."   Reeling Reviews   Robin Clifford B- "Martian Boy carries off the relationship with winning performances from [John] Cusack and the young [Bobby] Coleman..."   Seattle Post-Intelligencer   Sean Axmaker 2/5 "the fairly predictable cornball fluff we anticipate when off-center loners find a middle ground."   Filmcritic.com   Sean O'Connell "Before long, the story's conceit -- a loud-and-clear metaphor for the ways in which we all sometimes feel alien when it comes to human relationships -- just becomes wearying."   Salon.com   Stephanie Zacharek 0.5/4 "Heartfelt pap."   Film Freak Central   Walter Chaw  (1 - 25) of 25 OFCS Rating: 36% Rotten Page   1