Such a frustrating disappointment

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

This film will definitely be among my favorites. The film is incredibly touching and funny. And these contrasting emotions very harmoniously replace each other in the film. Funny antics of the main characters are replaced by arguments about human nature. The plot line dives into the problems and difficulties of interaction of the main characters, so that each time they emerge from them, rejoicing at the oxygen and lightness that comes with every new frontier overcome. The film is not only about the child needing a parent to understand this world, but also about the fact that the parent needs a child to understand himself and not forget who he is, despite the arsenal of masks that are customary to wear in society. Dialogues of heroes, even the most frivolous, are permeated with truths and clever conclusions. Many of the phrases from this film are worthy to become "winged". The film is full of the smallest charming details. Especially I liked the soundtrack Guster - "Satellite", playing during the Martian dance of David and Dennis.

Wanting to experience fatherhood, a man (John Cusack) adopts a youngster (Bobby Coleman) who has an unusual crisis of identity, believing he is from Mars, and trouble arises when the man, who devotes himself to his strange son, begins to believe that the boy is indeed an alien. "I'm not human," little Dennis says at one point in "Martian Child." So he believes. The lonely orphan has convinced himself that he was not abandoned by his parents, but arrived here from Mars. To protect himself against the sun, he walks around inside a cardboard box with a slit cut for his eyes and wears a weight belt around his waist to keep himself from drifting up into the sky. At no point during the film does anyone take mercy on the kid and explain that the sun is much more pitiless on Mars, and the gravity much lower. And it is perhaps there that Martian Child asks us to suspend our disbelief, for the version of "troubled" that Dennis represents in the film is the cute and cloying kind, with the boy exhibiting the sort of annoying problems that drive David to distraction at worst and amuse him at best. We all know that in reality a kid with the emotional problems and background that Dennis has would exhibit much more severe behavioral disorders beyond simply making up his own language and doing funny Martian dances. One such fantasy, of course, marks Dennis as a visiting alien from the planet Mars -- a being with special powers who is on a journey to observe mankind and then return to his home world with the information that he has gleaned. Obviously an outgrowth of the emotional abuse and alienation the boy has endured in his young life, the story nonetheless rings a little too true when some of his "powers" seem to actually work. Easily chalked up to coincidence, these events nonetheless give David pause. David sees a kindred soul in Dennis, for he was alienated himself as a kid and often turned to his own imagination to amuse himself in lieu of friends. He of course learned to channel that experience into a successful career as a writer, and one of his sci-fi books is now being turned into a big "Harry Potter in space" sort of movie. So even as he decides to adopt Dennis, David is also struggling with the challenge of writing a sequel to that book. Soon he is faced with not just dealing with his troubled young charge, but also with a bad case of writer's block. Parents need to know that although there's very little in the way of language, sex, and violence in this well-acted family drama, it does deal with some serious themes -- including death (of both humans and pets) and abandonment -- that are on the heavy side for young viewers, who may need guidance understanding what they see. Parents are shown discussing their frustrations with their kids and yelling at them, and kids are shown cruelly teasing a main character and calling him "weird." Some social drinking, but only among adults. Still, this isn't a film about planetary science but about love. Dennis attracts the attention of a lonely science-fiction writer named David (John Cusack), a recent widower who can't get the cardboard box out of his mind and goes back to the orphanage one day with some suntan cream. Eventually, almost against his own will, he asks Dennis to come home with him for a test run and decides to adopt him. The movie is the sentimental, very sentimental, story of how that goes. This is not to say "Martian Child" lacks good qualities. Young Bobby Coleman plays Dennis as consistent, stubborn and suspicious, and Amanda Peet has a warm if predictable role as the woman in David's life who starts out as best friend and ends up where female best friends often do, in his arms. Martian Child wants to make us cry. It nearly made me cry. This is an exercise in shameless and inept emotional manipulation. Still, Martian Child manages to make powerful statements about a person's ability to love even in the midst of personal suffering. And it speaks of the need to embrace the innocents who have been beaten down and injured by our oftentimes painful world.

This is an example of a nice family movie. The plot is pretty original and ordinary at the same time: an adult adopts a child nd tries to find common ground with him. The special thing about their relations is that the little boy imagined that he is from a different planet and behaves as a Martian child. He hopes that one day his real parents will come back to Earth and get him. He can't understand how his mother could abandoned him and creates such an image. John Ceasuck in the role of father plays brilliantly. His character tries to get the boy out his world without turning his brains. Actually, if to think generally this story can be applied to any child as everybody fabled at least once. And it can be apllied to adults too. Every person is from Mars in a way. The movie is full of funny moments and it is simulteneously thought-provoking. There are moments to analyse and to think of ourselves. I suppose Martian Child is a good example of right family values. I reccomend to watch this movie to everybody at least to enlarge the outlook and maybe to reconsider the attitude towards unusual people. There is much more hidden under frivolous behaviour.

'Martian Child' is a 2007 American film directed by Menno Meyjes and based on David Gerrold's novelette of the same name written in 1994. The film stars John Cusack is a writer who adopts a strange young boy (Bobby Coleman) who believes himself to be from Mars. They try to find common ground. David sees aspects of himself and his own awkward childhood in the boy. The film was theatrically released on November 2, 2007 by New Line Cinema.The film is very fascinating and watching it is a complete pleasure, despite the fact that the plot is quite heavy. Each part of the film complements the picture. Everything is carefully done, especially the musical accompaniment. It does not distract all attention to itself, but helps to keep it in tone throughout the whole film. I want to note the choice of John Cusack. This actor is very talented. His writer in the movie "The Adult World" from 2013 has some similarities with this character. It is probably that this role influenced the actor.It's really nice to look at how a small child learns the world through trials and errors, and through a powerful fallacy. The great relationships of the father and son are transmitted through the screen. Indeed, people find each other quite unexpectedly and help to determine the life path. This is all the charm.