Whereas other film-makers are driven to explore certain themes or character archetypes or genres, what seems to get Robert Zemeckis out of bed every morning artistically is the tech: How can this or that new special effects technique be used to tell a story that’s never been told? And while I personally don’t think that’s necessarily the greatest starting point for telling a story, fair is fair, it’s lead Zemeckis to create some truly fantastic films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Back to the Future trilogy and also movies that people insist on thinking are fantastic, like Forrest Gump and Cast Away.
Robert Zemeckis is a true film-making pioneer. And by “pioneer” I mean “person who goes to strange new places that it might have been better for all involved if he’d stayed at home”. Specifically, with his 2004 film The Polar Express he discovered the Uncanny Valley and liked it so much he decided to build a cabin and the spend the rest of his career there. Today’s movie is part of a sequence of Zemeckis directed and/or produced movies that used the gimmick of taking famous actors and slathering them in digital paint to create something that eschews the believability of live action while also avoiding the tedious charm and inventiveness of animation (I know, right? Isn’t that the dream?). Seriously though, I am genuinely agog at the amount of time and money Zemeckis has spent on something that could never be anything other than the worst of both worlds. Motion capture can be a wonderful tool, sure, and many films make excellent use of it. But Zemeckis seems to want this one tool to be the whole movie. It’s like he’s trying to build a house entirely out of spanners. It would be pointless, as there are far better materials to build a house out of and a spanner house would be ugly, cold and utterly unsuited for actual human beings so I think this metaphor is doing trojan work.
In case I’m being a little too subtle up in here, Mars Needs Moms is a bad, bad, bad film. It’s the kind of movie that legendary film critic Pauline Kael would have referred to as “a stinking pile of the devil’s ass biscuits”.
She was a treasure.
The movie begins on Mars, the Niles to Earth’s Frasier. A Martian named Ki is watching baby Martians being born, which consists of them being popped out of the very surface of the planet like little furry zits. And already I have so many questions that they are clustering around this movies like flies on a turd.
If the Martians reproduce by just being spontaenously generated from the surface of the planet, why are there still male and female Martians? Is it just the Martians or does all life on this planet reproduce this way? Is this why we never see any other native lifeforms? How can you have a single species ecosystem? OH GOD THEY’RE CANNIBALS AREN’T THEY?!
Now you might be saying “Mouse. Chill. It’s a movie named Mars Needs Moms based on a picture book for five year olds. Scientific rigour is probably not what they’re going for”. And sure, I’d be willing to overlook it if this movie had a scintilla of whimsy or innocence but, oh my oh me, this is not that kind of movie. It may think it is (the tone they were going for is actually really hard to pin down) but rest assured, this movie is a nasty, mean sonuvabitch and if you want whimsy or innocence you just keep on looking. Ki watches the babies and appears to be getting a little broody, but she’s interrupted by her supervisor…*checks imdb*…are you frucking kidding me?
SUPERVISOR. HER NAME IS SUPERVISOR. SHE IS THE VILLAIN OF THIS THING AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER TO GIVE HER A NAME.
Okay, well, fitting. Because everything about this character is awful. Let’s start with the design.
Tonight, the part of the villain will be played by a recently vasectomied scrotum cos-playing as Enda Mode.
Um okay. So there’s a slight aesthaetic issue with this design: I hate looking at it and it makes me sad, angry and disgusted at humanity. It’s the Mike Pence of cartoon characters. Supervisor is played by Frau Farbissina herself, Mindy Sterling who is a damn fine comic actor but who is reduced in this to shrieking unintelligible alien gibberish in the harshest most unpleasant tones imaginable. You’ve heard of villains you love to hate? Supervisor is a villain you are forced to hate at gunpoint while you tearfully dig your own grave. She is just awful, vile and foul.
She is not the worst character in this.
Let that sink in.
You still want to go on?
You mad fools. Very well. Follow me. Touch nothing, speak to no one. Stay upon the path.
Supervisor orders Ki to scan Earth for mothers who are good at discipling their kids and she hones in on a kid named Milo being made to take out the trash by his mother who is named *checks imdb*…are you frucking kidding me?
MOM. HER NAME IS “MOM”.
Do you know what that is? FUCKING EMBLEMATIC, THAT’S WHAT THAT IS.
I mean, the whole moral of the movie is supposed to be Milo learning that his mother is a human being and not just a live-in valet and they didn’t even give her a name. We are four minutes in and I’m going to have to send out for more bile. Anyway, our hero is Milo, a forty year old man suffering from some kind of weird Benjamin Button-esque malady.
Sorry, my bad. That’s supposed to be a kid. Y’know, I made a joke to Ms Mouse as we were watching this that Milo looked like Scott Evil from the Austin Powers movie had made his own Mini-Me. Imagine our surprise to learn that Seth Green actually did the motion capture for Milo. So, here’s my question…why? Why did they cast an actor who was pushing 40 to play a twelve year old boy? Did someone see him in IT and thought he’d be perfect and not realise that human children age? Not being glib, genuinely asking. Quote:
“According to the Los Angeles Times, Seth Green spent six weeks in a special sensor-equipped performance-capture suit while performing his lines as Milo. During post-production, the filmmakers noticed that Green was able to physically imitate the movements and behaviors of a 9-year-old boy, but his voice sounded too mature for the character.”
Took ’em the whole six weeks to figure that out, eh? Not…y’know, within five seconds of talking with him on the phone? Craziest part is, they then hired an actual 12 year old (Seth Dusky, a very nice young gentleman who’s doing his best) to dub over all this footage they had of a thirty seven year old man pretending to be a 12 year old boy.
My God this production must have been like fucking Wonderland. The cameraman must have been wearing shoes on his head while the Mad Hatter and the March Hare had an unbirthday party in the editing suite and spread butter over the B-roll. WAS THIS MADE BY CHIMPS?!
Anyway, let’s talk about the human characters. They are hideously ugly. Not “sunburnt ballsack” ugly but still distressingly unpretty. Did you ever play that game in school where you stare at someone’s face for so long that it stops looking like a face and just becomes a weird skull wrapped in skin? Imagine a movie populated by those creatures and then you will realise what Robert Zemeckis has done and why he must be stopped.
So Milo is waiting for his Dad to come back from a business trip to take him to the movies but his Dad calls to tell him that his flight’ been cancelled and he won’t make it back in time. Milo’s bummed so Mom, his Mom, tells him that he can watch “Zombie Dawn 3” on TV if he finishes his dinner. I actually heard that as “Zombie Don” first and I didn’t know if it was a movie about a zombie called Don, or if it was the closing chapter in a trilogy about a Mafioso who becomes a zombie and whose worsening state of decay serves as a metaphor for the corruption of his soul brought on by a life in organised crime holy shit that’s brilliant no one steal my idea if you do I will sue your ass so bad.
Anyway, Milo’s overjoyed but when dinner comes around he tries to welch on eating his broccoli saying that they look like brains. Mom, who is Milo’s Mom, says that since he loves zombies that should be his bag and Milo replies “Nobody likes zombies, they’re an abomination. I’m committed to their annihilation”.
Mmmm that’s some believable dialogue write there. It rhymes, just like the way people talk in real life!
Anyway, Mom (the main character’s mother) tells him that if he doesn’t eat the broccoli he doesn’t get to watch TV so Milo feeds his broccoli to the cat, who is so convincingly rendered you’d almost believe he was real.
This naturally causes the cat to be violently sick because his mother just had enough of his bullshit and broke out the rat poison cats just don’t like broccoli. Mom sends Milo to his room and he yells at her that he wishes he didn’t have a mom which is just devastating to her. I mean, he name is literally “Mom”, what else could she be?
“If Mom cannot be mom, what is Mom’s function?”
Anyway, in the middle of the night Milo wakes up guilt-ridden over what he said to his mother and asks the cat what he should do (the cat’s name, hilariously, is Cujo, which makes me think someone in the production thought he looked like something from Pet Semetary too and decided to drive the Stephen King connection home). Milo decides to apologise to his mother and goes to her room ony to see her being abducted by Martians. He chases after them and ends up stowing away on their spaceship and getting shanghaied to the Red Planet. Mom is placed in stasis and is taken away by Supervisor while Milo searches desperately for her in the Martian base. He gets dicovered and pursued by the Martians until a mysterious voice speaks to him over the intercom and guides him to safety through a garbage chute. This takes him to a massive garbage ump in the centre of the planet and the one shot in this thing that is genuinely beautiful and not flaming garbage.
Ironically, it is a picture OF flaming garbage.
Milo meets some male Martians who apparently live under the surface of the planet foraging for food in the refuse. This then leads to what feels like the longest scene in the history of film.
MILO: I’m just trying to find my mom. I want to find my mom.
MARTIANS: Mom?
MILO: Don’t you understand? My mom.
MARTIANS: Mom? Mom!
MILO: Yeah, my mom. No, my mom. She’s the one that feeds me. She feeds me…
MARTIANS: Feem? Feem?
MILO: Yeah, my mom. She feeds me.
(He mimes for the Martians. They mime back)
MILO: No, no, she… she…she washes my clothes.
(He mimes for the Martians. They mime back)
MILO: She washes my clothes.You know, my…No, my… No, she… she… My mom. She vacuums the house. You know, she vacuums the house.
(He mimes for the Martians. They mime back)
MILO: Yeah, she’s the one…No.no. No, that’s not it. Stop. No! My… my mom.She’s the one that… She tucks me in at night. She tucks me in? My mom?
And it was at this point, dear reader, that I actually yelled at the screen like someone at a wedding reception who’s just seen a groomsman start to have sex with the cake.
“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!”
Okay: the good news. The scene is finally brought to a merciful end when a flying robot scoops him up and brings him a mysterious shack hanging from the underside of the planet’s surface. The bad news is: we’re now deep in Gribble territory.
Oh Christ. What did I do to deserve this? I’m not a bad mouse. I’m not.
Not since fucking Cheasel T. Fucking Weasel has there been a character in a movie that I had such an instinctive, primal revulsion to. The voice, the endless patter, the self-satisfied braying at his own “jokes”, the sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub Jack Black schtick, the smell. Yes, the smell. The character smells. Don’t ask me how. Maybe this movie is so bad it gave me synesthesia but this guy smells of rubber, cold sweat and Guinness farts. Fuck this chode.
Gribble tells Milo that he’s part of a secret Reagan era astronaut programme to stop the spread of communism to Mars which, if you didn’t grow up in the eighties, is absolutely a thing that Ronald Reagan would have done, and probably did.
Gribble is actually a kid who was brought to Mars by accident just like Milo (like, in the exact same way) in the eighties and had to grow up on Mars alone which is why he is a walking fart-sack of eighties pop culture references. He even has that most eighties of accoutrements, a robot sidekick.
Least cute robot sidekick in history. Best character in the film. Make of that what you will.
He’s called Two-Cat. Oh yeah, he gets a name. Characters having names is super important.
Alright, so it’s right around here that that tone problem I mentioned really comes into play. See, a title like Mars Needs Moms carries certain expectations, namely that we’re for something very, very silly. Light-hearted. Frivolous. Dumb as shit, most likely, but possibly a lark.
But this movie is incredibly grim and depressing and I’m not even talking about the gender politics although JESUS. This is why Mars Needs Moms:
Every 25 years the planet Mars is unable to hold it in any longer and pukes up a new generation of Martians. The female Martians, who are just too darn busy to raise the infants, throw all the male infants into the garbage hell under the surface of the planet and give the female infants to robots to be raised. Because the female Martians are heartless career gals who don’t know the first thing about their natural motherly duties, they have to abduct a human mother every 25 years and hook her up to a solar powered brain extractor which provides the programming for the current generation of Nanny Bots while also burning her to a fucking cinder.
WOW. So yes. Stupid. So stupid (why do they keep having to do this? Didn’t they keep the first Mom on file? Or did they want to keep up with the hottest new parenting trends?). But also, yikes that is bleak. And as we later see in flashback, Gribble actually witnessed this happening to his own mother…No! No!
Don’t pity him. Do not pity him. He’s not worth it.
Because the movie also decides at this point to become a science fiction retelling of Stephen King’s Misery. Because Gribble is so desperately lonely he wants Milo to stay with him in his Martian palace to arrested development for ever and forget about saving his mother who is about to be murdered by aliens. And to do this, he pretends to help Milo rescue his mother all the while planning on letting him almost get killed by the Female Martians so that milo will be so traumatised that he’ll come back and stay with Gribble forever.
And this is not a horror movie. This guy is supposed to be the loveable comic relief.
Oh, but all this I could forgive but for the single most evil thing about Gribble. His catchphrase.
“Gribble-Tastic!”
I mean, it’s not quite as bad as “It’s Hitlerin’ Time, bitches!” but it still more than enough to put Gribble high in the ranks of history’s greatest monsters.
Okay, so because Gribble can’t even recklessly endanger a child to gain control over them without fucking it up, Milo gets captured and the female martians are able to trace the signal back to Gribble’s hideout. The martians send soldiers to capture the legendary Alien Turd Beast that lives beneath the surface of the planet and has haunted their nightmares for 25 long years. Milo escapes and hides in the martians compound, but Gribble has been captured and is being horribly tortured, so he’s on his own. Okay, we never actually Gribble being tortured but dammit, let me dream.
Milo comes across Ki, the Martian from the first scene, spray-painting brightly coloured graffiti over the grim Martian cityscape and she saves him from falling to his death off a skyscraper. C’mon movie. Give me one character in this thing who’s not complete ass.
“Mellow out, man! I’m not the fuzz!”
Oh joy. She learned English from watching television from the sixties (which would make a lot more sense if she was from a planet many lightyears away instead of within spitting distance to Earth but whatever). It gets old fast. It actually gets old before it was ever young. It was born old, like the Titans of myth.
Milo tells her that he’s looking for his mother and in the process gives her an explanation as to what Moms do (cooking, cleaning, vacuuming, wishing they’d known about the coil). So, as a hot alien chick, Ki must be instantly and irrevocably fascinated by the human thing called Love which usually leads to the human thing called Kissing but not in this instance because Milo is underage and even this movie has a floor. Instead, Ki imprints on the idea of motherly love and wants to know more. But Milo races back to Gribble’s douche-cave and finds him gone (and the world a better place for it). Two-Cat leads Milo back to the martian city where the supervisor is about to order Gribble’s execution. “Luckily” Ki helps them escape into a system of caves beneath the planet’s surface.
Gribble comes clean about the bullshit he pulled and we see in flashback how he came to the planet and tried to save his mother and had to watch her being burned to a crisp before his eyes.
Yeah. Seems about right, sure.
I literally only bring it up because young Gribble ran out to rescue his mother with a spare oxygen helmet and when she was killed he dropped the helmet on the Martian surface and that’ll come into play in the climax so just file it away.
In the cave, they discover a mural showing that the ancient Martians also lived in nice little nuclear families and oh God, Ki and Gribble are OH GAWD…
Every single male of her species is a feral trash-heap dweller and she can still do better than him.
The trio hurry to rescue Milo’s mom, who is named Mom, before sunrise and in doing so they trigger a revolution by showing the picture of the mural across the martian internet which causes all the martians to turn against their scrotum faced mistress. Milo reaches the extractor where Mom is still unconscious and he wakes her up. When she realises she’s on an alien planet she just…guys…I don’t even…she just makes this weird howl like a robot realising it doesn’t have a soul it is the most upsetting thing…
Zemeckis, what have you wrought?
Okay, brace yourselves. I am about to give this movie some praise. There is one scene that is actually quite effective. So Milo and Mom have to escape across the Martian surface and they’re wearing oxygen helmets. But the Supervisor sees them and shoots at Milo, causing him to trip and smash his helmet on the surface (bit of a design flaw there). We shift to Mom’s perspective as she takes Milo’s broken helmet off and places a new helmet on him. We see through her eyes as Milo starts breathing again, sees her, smiles and then see the smile fade in horror as he realises she’s given him his helmet to save his life.
It’s…actually done very well. Very touching.
Because this movie isn’t quite psychotic enough actually kill a child’s mother on screen…again, Gribble remembers where he dropped that helmet all those years ago and lo and behold it’s still working hurrah and Mom’s fine, it’s all fine now.
The Supervisor is captured and she reveals that she orchestrated this whole robot-childcare based society because the females didn’t have time for raising children and the males were too busy dancing and having fun which is why they have to be exiled to the garbage world below the surface and Jesus Christ it’s like somebody bought the rights to some red-pilled reddit forum bullshit and stuck Scrotum aliens in it.
Anyway, you know how this goes. The Martians are now paired off in nuclear families, Gribble and Ki are an item (where is my trusty sick bucket?) and Milo and Mom return home. And one of the first thing’s Milo does is take out the trash by vaporising it with a lazer he stole from Mars.
And then he just turns and looks at the camera and fixes you with his glassy, soulless CGI eyes.
Sweet dreams.
***
Too often, my friends, I will end a review of a terrible movie by somberly noting how it nonetheless went on to sweep the box office and become the most successful film of the decade and we are all doomed, doomed, alack alay.
Oh this bombed. It was glorious. This is the worst performing movie Disney ever distributed. One of the top 20 greatest flops of all time. There will be no sequels. There will be no DIsney + series.
It’s dead. It’s done. Good job humanity.
Now I just need to join the rest of the planet in forgetting it ever existed. Mars Needs Moms?
Mouse Needs Whiskey.
Animation: 03/20
It looks like real people killed a family of CGI cartoon characters and started wearing their skin.
Leads: 02/20
Villain: 02/20
Two points. One per teste.
Did no one notice? Seriously? DID NO ONE NOTICE?!
Supporting Characters: 0/20
Music: 10/20
You know what, I didn’t notice a single bit of the score because I was so horrified by this movie. But I actually went back and listed to John Powell’s soundtrack divorced of the cinematic atrocity it was lodged in and you know what? It’s actually quite nice.
FINAL SCORE: 17%
Next Update: 19 March 2020
Next Time:
Your guess is as good as mine.
unshavedmouse 
Your best reviews are always the harshest ones. Keep up the awesome work!
Thanks!
Well done Mouse, thanks to your sacrifice I only lost a fraction of my soul after reading this. I can only imagine what happened after you had to watch and write this.
Whenever I needed to explain the Uncanny Valley I used “The Polar Express”, human-like robots (like the ones they have in Japan) and the one from “Metropolis” as examples. I’ve added “Cats” to that list but I figured “Mars Needs Moms” is too cruel to use. There are somethings humanity just shouldn’t glimpse and this is one of them.
Zemeckis produced, as you said, but the director was Simon Wells, and his career is… peculiar.
He started off working an animator for Richard Williams, where he was one of the main animators and storyboard artists, and where he met Zemeckis. He then joined Steven Spielberg’s Amblimation studio, where he directed or co-directed all three of their features – Fievel Goes West, We’re Back: A Dinosaur’s Story, and Balto. All enjoyable to one degree or another, though all three make some bizarre story decisions.
Then, he was codirector on one genuine masterpiece, Prince of Egypt. So did he finally find his feet on his fourth film?
Well, his fifth film was the 2002 live action The Time Machine. Trivia! Wells is actually the great-grandson of HG Wells, which resulted in… a pretty generic Hollywood adaptation instead of a faithful one. Again, entertaining and technically proficient, and more curious and memorable than so-so films typically are, but its box office was, like the film, just okay.
After that, he went back to being one of the animators on Polar Express, where Zemeckis told him about Mars Needs Moms. He jumped at the chance and poured himself into it for half a decade. He and his wife wrote the script, and this became his big passion project.
He hasn’t made a film since.
But he has, for the last several years, been attached to… a low-budget adaptation of the formula screenplay writing guide Save the Cat.
As I say, peculiar.
Anyway, like everybody else on the planet, I missed this one. But I do recall being a touch disappointed – I’m fond of several of Wells’ films, and was kind of rooting for this one. I mean, not enough to bother *seeing* it, but you know.
I looked up the original book right after reading this and was surprised to find it was written and drawn by Berkeley Breathed, the guy that did Bloom County and Opus. From the few low-res images I could find, I can’t say that his art doesn’t have its own uncanny valley problems, what with the usual unsettling surrealism you get from his cartoons, but it DOES have an actual personality and identity. It baffles me that they threw out a pretty accomplished cartoonist’s aesthetic to replace it with…whatever this is.
I love his stuff.
Right, so, before you brought it up, I had never heard of this movie and had no idea it even existed.
Now, after reading this review, I am very definitely going to forget that it exists in about five minutes. I can already feel the memory-erasing neurons beginning to fire…😏
Oh, but before I forget everything, I absolutely want a part in your upcoming “Zombie Don” story! Specifically, I want to be a low level thug whose main job is to die in stupid ways to show that Crime Does Not Pay(tm) — except since these are ZOMBIE mafioso, I’ll keep coming back, albeit missing a few more bits of anatomy each time. Sounds fun, right? 😁👍
Let’s talk.
I swear this movie is like the Silence in Doctor Who. I cannot retain knowledge of its existence. I kept forgetting what you were reviewing next, went to the bottom of the Captain Marvel review to check, and then immediately had one of those moments where you check your watch and don’t know what time it is. My brain rejects this movie.
And you know what? Maybe that’s for the best.
Forest Gump is actually fantastic Mouse.
Patrick (H) Willems did recently vidoes of Zemeckis and his career which was interesting (even if he sadly doesn’t like Forest Gump) he doesn’t speak of Mars Needs Moms I recall since he just produced it. But it made me wish Mouse would do review on Beowulf.
I didn’t realize how bleak Mars Needs Moms was, the poster looked a bit odd but not this disturbing. I wonder why Disney didn’t do anything about it.
They were just the distributor so they weren’t really involved in the production
I have actually been all for phasing live acting out of live action films for awhile now. Rogue One convinced me it’s not worth it anymore. I’m tired of Hollywood trying to convince some A lsiter did their own stunts when I know insurance companies never allow that.
Oh shit you’re diving into the world of Don Hertzfeldt. I’m not one to exaggerate so please take what I’m about to say very literally. He is one of the greatest animators to ever exist. Period. And the movie you’re gonna review, “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” is an absolute masterpiece. I’d call it one of the greatest pieces of animation in the 21st century. In fact I’d go so far as to say the only thing that really rivals it is his other work, “World of Tomorrow.” It’s that good. I’m excited for this.
So no pressure
Lol none whatsoever. It is a very heavy film though jsyk. Lot’s of big ideas.
Thanks for another good review.
And thanks for reading
Gribble is played by Dan Fogler who is absolutely the poor man’s Jack Black so him being “sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub Jack Black schtick” is spot on.
Man I remember seeing billboards for this thing and thinking about how awful it looked. Glad I never saw it. Sorry that you had to Mouse.
Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m already dead.
I often give even movies with bad reputations a shot, for the rare case in which I ended up enjoying them. But I have decided a long time ago that I am really comfortable skipping this one. Those eyes alone…shudder.
Oh, and I am kind of afraid to ask, but…what is a teste? This one stumped the translator….
A testicle.
…now I can’t unsee it…ignorance was a bliss.
Beauty is truth MWAHAHAHA
It ain’t worth your charity.
Finally, someone else who hates Forrest Gump!
As one of those FORREST GUMP fans, one feels I ought to pop in at this point and tell you to leave the poor boy alone – he ain’t perfect but we like him!
Hahaha, I’m eternally surprised how Forest Gump is such a polarising movie… It failed to to invoke in me a feeling more intense than listening to an uncle recounting his schooldays at a family function.
But my brother LOVES it and I’m like how?
Between this and Space Chimps, the lesson we can take is that, whenever digital animated movies go to outer space, that ship crashes and burns more often than not.
Ah, but Wall E though.
Vintage Mouse. Cackled the whole way through. Thumbs up.
Also: what is it about animated sci-fi that attracts hacky film-makers? Obviously there are some diamonds in there like Lilo and Stitch, and WALL-E and such – but some of the worst, weirdest and ugliest kids’ films seem to be sci-fi.
Now there’s an interesting question. Well I think it’s quite rare for children’s movies to have no fantastical elements at all. You occasionally get things like the Parent Trap or Hannah Montana but by and large they don’t make straight comedies, romances or historical dramas for kids. Usually there’s either a magical or technological/fantastical element which means either science fiction or fantasy. I’ve definitely done more than my fair share of reviewing shitty kids science fiction movies (THANKS) but there are plenty of awful animated fantasies out there (Arthur and the Invisibles) or mixtures of scifi and fantasy (Delgo).
Hm. Good point. In fact, if you count all the ‘anthropomorphic whatever’ movies as fantasy (magic realism, strictly speaking), then a whopping majority of kids’ films including animation are fantasy – and by extension, most bad animated kids’ films are fantasy as well.
It’s a cliche for me to say ‘this reminds me of a Pratchett quote’ at this point – but this totally reminds me of a Pratchett quote. ‘Fantasy is… the ur-literature from which all other literature has flown.’ Humanity started with myths, and our own childhoods start with fantasy.
You kicked off a massive debate in the mouse house as to what genre the Toy Story movies are.
This is in answer to the headscratcher whether Toy Story is Sci-Fi or Fantasy… Since no mad scientist created the toys in his underground lab and they come to life… Just because… I’d like to think it’s fantasy. In all fairness, the idea is rooted in a child wondering if toys are secretly alive!
Good Grief, all this makes me decidedly glad that the only Zemeckis mo-cap film that I’ve ever seen is BEOWULF; it has a little of the eerie, glassy-eyed quality you mentioned but it also has Mr Ray Winston hamming his heart out of that hairy chest, a tub-thumping soundtrack by Mr Alan Silvestri and quite a few other goodies to recommend it (not the least being Ms. Angelina Jolie’s ‘Evil Queen of Everything’ routine of hers which I find so absolutely delightful – why her Maleficent has to be a hero when she has such potential to be DELICIOUSLY Evil I really don’t know … or perhaps simply cannot accept).
In any case please allow me to extend my condolences on sitting through such a penance, Good Mouse; please accept my Best Wishes for the health of your family & yourself and may you enjoy better luck with forthcoming attractions! (-:
Ah, the Delicious Romp of Madness that was Beowolf. I had the joy of seeing it in a theatre empty but for my friends and me, and we had, to quote Mr Mouse, a bit of a lark with it. It was just dripping with hardcore smexy energy, wasn’t it?
Sir, you are hilarious. I finished reading through the backlog and enjoyed it greatly. One thing I noticed was that your reviews are becoming consistently funnier and more enjoyable. Thank you for many hours of fun and showing me new appreciation for film and animation.
Thank you so much. You’re very kind.