Mars Needs Moms

We took the kids to see this much maligned movie after reading largely positive reviews and I was ultimately satisfied.

After having watched a couple motion-capture animated movies I have to say that I’m not a big fan of the medium.  Motion-capture attempts to capture the facial expressions of real actors playing animated characters, but honestly the results are hardly worth the trouble.  Given the impressive results that digital animation is able to achieve (like in the recent Toy Story 3 or How to Train Your Dragon), I wonder why bother with this technique?

The fluidity of the characters’ movements isn’t any better than what you get with regular animation, or is arguably worse.  Are the characters’ facial resemblance to their actors actually supposed to make a difference?  If so, I don’t get it.  If I want to see that particular actor, I’ll go see a live action movie with him in it, period.

Anyway, Mars Needs Moms tells the story of a little kid who witnesses his mother’s abduction and embarks on a big adventure on the red planet to free her.  The screenplay is good and the technical aspect, apart from my own personal indifference towards the medium, quite good as well.

There’s actually a moment towards the end when I couldn’t believe they would actually go where I thought they were going, so I’d say the movie is pretty good.

Grade: 7