Thoughts on Martian Child

Warning: This is not a review and contains spoilers.
I have discovered I do not like to do reviews, primarily because I do not have the talent for them and secondarily because there are so many people who do it better than me - one of whom is in my blogroll. Baradwaj if you ever read this I am talking about you.

If I was one of those people that had the temerity to summarize a movie in one word, the word I would pick for this movie would be - awkwardness. It is a word that David Gerrold, the original author, and the screen adapters seem to love, because they populate the movie with characters and situations that have it in spades. And it seems they enjoy these situations in the interest of being contrarian (to a certain extent), because they insinuate, by way of dialog, that the audience knee-jerk reaction when it comes to dealing with awkwardness is discomfort.

We are introduced to David, played by the ever-affable John Cusack, through a familiar decoy tactic and quickly discover that sharing a socially-challenged childhood will draw him into adopting the titular character. At first glance David is a hollywood staple - a succesful writer going through an emotional loss that is affecting his work. His sister Liz, Joan Cusack exuding know-it all annoyance, is an over-stressed suburban mom with 2 kids and thinks she is doing her brother a favor by dissuading him from adopting. However a friend of David's departed wife, Harlee-with whom David shares a curiously flirtatious relationship, is more supportive of the decision. The setting up of the characters could have used some better directing, IMO. The mise'-en'scene for the sequences at the shelter where David first meets Dennis, an orphan who believes he is here from Mars on a mission, has particularly uninspired camera angles and staging. But once Dennis and David decide to pitch their tents together the script and the direction settle down and the general viewing experience rises immediately.

The initial friction and the subsequent failed attempts at bonding work primarily because Cusack is so good at playing the awkward (there's that word again) and over-concerned first-time father. Bobby Coleman as Dennis is no slouch himself and it helps that the movie is very very sensitive to its 2 main protagonists in endearing these two flawed people to us. Bonding across generations usually utilises very similar methods but where dramatic writing and life usually take diverging paths are in the way successes and failures are strung together. Martian Child sidesteps the common pitfall of stringing together a continuous downswing followed by an uninterrupted upswing to a climax and intersperses its ups with its downs. In the process it rings truer to life.

In a wonderful sequence within a car, David trails off into this long monologue that attempts to explain Dennis' behavior. As he muses on the structure of the cosmos, the big bang and the need to pretend to be from another planet, the lights dance on the vehicle's window panes in kaleidoscopic colors that would rival any planetarium. Dennis uses pieces of this monologue and other witticisms he imbibes from David to convince a quorum that staying with David is the best option. It is but normal to expect that once this is succesfully accomplished the parent and kid high five, share a quip ,walk away into the sunset and all would be right in the world again. But convincing a quorum is not what reality is about, especially when the essential problem still lingers, and Martian Child does not use this emotional crescendo to sign off. We are still a meta-story and a meta-audience, Anjelica Huston in a cameo, away from arriving at the slightly maudlin but eventually necessary resolution.

The movie also subtly pushes the political envelope, and its liberal leanings are there for all to see. Portraits of President George.W.Bush, possibly a reference to the "no-child-left-behind" campaign, mysteriously find their way into frames of every single sequence where Dennis' ability to function in "normal" society is questioned. Now I'm no bleeding heart liberal but I do enjoy humor and the irony and pun in referencing "no-child-left-behind" in movie about a kid who thinks he is from Mars is just the kind of joke that makes this movie eminently watchable.