The best thing about the charm-free, off-putting Disney-sponsored toon “Mars Needs Moms” is the title, which cartoonist Berkeley Breathed (“Bloom County”) evidently borrowed from the legendarily inept 1967 sci-fi flick “Mars Needs Women” for his own 2007 children’s book.
Breathed provides the Spielbergian conceit — a suburban kid tries to rescue his kidnapped mom after stowing away on a spaceship. This overblown adaptation (available in 3-D and, for those with money to burn, IMAX) adds a misogynistic subtext that in no way can be dealt with in a cartoon that runs barely over an hour before you get to the lengthy end credits.
That isn’t even the biggest problem: The obnoxious youngster is voiced by the supremely annoying Seth Green. And the voice of the middle-aged Earthling who explains the mysteries of Mars to him (and to us) is provided by perhaps the only actor working in Hollywood today who is even less fun to listen to: Dan Fogler.
And then there’s the less-than-beguiling, dead-eye motion-capture animation — provided by actors hooked up to computer sensors — that has worked better in live-action films like “Avatar” than in ‘toons. Suffice it to say that Disney long ago pulled the plug on ImageMovers, the studio responsible for “Mars Needs Moms” and “A Christmas Carol.”
Produced by “Christmas Carol” director Robert Zemeckis with direction credited to Simon Wells (H.G.’s great-grandson, who helmed the ill-fated live-action 2002 remake of “The Time Machine”), the movie has some impressive imagery referencing “Star Wars” and (like Zemeckis’ notorious “The Polar Express”) the Nazi documentary “Triumph of the Will.”
But aside from a relatively brief appearance by Joan Cusack’s avatar as the kidnapped mother, there are no involving characters or situations.
And even adults may be confused by the back story about Mars’ matriarchal society — presided over by an extraterrestrial version of Linda Hunt — which casts all newborn males into underground dungeons while the girls are raised by robots.
Cusack’s character is scheduled to be, um, lobotomized to program those robots in “Mars Needs Moms.” And you thought you had a lot of explaining to do for the little ones at the end of “Rango.”