Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Cheryl A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

anufrieva_nastya 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.

laalmadeguerra The science fiction writer David has been grieving over his deceased wife for two years already. He decides to change his life and adopt a strange boy named Dennis. The kid considers himself a Martian, he hides from the sunlight harmful to him and does not communicate with his peers at all. In order to find a common language with the boy, David asks for a help his sister and the best friend of his wife. This is a deeply philosophical film. He is filled with simple truths, which people sometimes ignore. Almost every phrase in this film has the right to become "flying" or "winged", if you watch it thoughtfully and carefully. At first I started watch it because of the content of the plot, and by the end I realized that the story itself is just as an addition to the embedded meaning of the human essence, this film teaches you to look at the world without deceiving either yourself or others - but only if you listen rather than to watch. In general, the film has meaning. It raises the topic of fathers and children, adopted children and adoptive parents. It makes you think about many things and even revise the attitude towards your own child. I advise you to watch this film without exception.

shelep_natalia Martian Child Never ever, never-never-never, never ever give up Recently I have watched the comedy drama directed by Menno Meyjes and David Gerrold (the roman's author of the same name) that is called "Martian child" which includes too many psychological and philosophical topics. The main actors are Amanda Peet, John Cusack, Oliver Platt who have already played in the same movie before and the child, Bobby Coleman. All of them are truly professionals. By the way, John Cusack is so popular with many of his roles, but his role as David in "Martian Child" is really successful. The viewer may notice how sensible, helpful and friendly he is, he definitely feels his character. Bobby Coleman has managed wonderfully to play such a difficult character as the Martian Child.He is just an ancient sole. He has puzzled all secrets out.It is a really deep, beautiful and thought-provoking movie. It depicts one of the most serious problems of society, frames and standards. The matter is that if you are unordinary, if you do not look alike, if you are different, people think you are abnormal, crazy or have some psychological disorders and nobody wants to deal with you. The main character of the movie knows what such people feel because he was an outcast when he went to school that is why the Martian Child has become so close to him. The Martian Child is a sullen boy who is constantly sitting in the box and imagines that he has come to the planet to perform the mission. David (John Cusack) seems to be a very wise person here; although he told in the very beginning that he had not had anything common with the psychology he managed to build a very harmonic relation with a boy based on a really deep understanding of psychology. The main principle is not to damage. David has decided not to interfere in the child's mind, he doesn't make any demands or impose himself, he just gives the opportunity to the kid to open his inner world to others, and he let the child do some small steps when he is ready to do them.In spite of the impressive play of John Cusack, it is very important to listen to him in this movie and to hear what he says because many things are really wise that have been mentioned here.The boy who has been abandoned once tries to explain the act of his parent. He imagined his own world and created the whole story and believed in it so much that he began living the part. He has decided that he is Martian and he is not abandoned but sent to perform a very important mission on the Earth. He was the way too into it that he was able to do some small miracles like to guess what colour an M&M's candy eating it with closed eyes or to change colours of the traffic light because all our thoughts have a great impact on out lives and may change a lot. It was not an easy business to open the inner mind of this child and we could see it when David was not able to control his emotions or words but finally he managed. Danny grounded when he took the awful truth and asked, "Why did they leave me?"I wanted to show you that not all parents may disappearThe culmination of the movie is the episode on the roof when Danny decided to go to his "biological" Martian parents. There have been many sensible episodes before, for example, when the dog passed away or some David's tries of father's acts of love, but the episode of the roof is the revelation, to which the scriptwriter had been coming for the whole film. Here both of the characters are absolutely opened and defenseless to each other. They both came to a new period of their father-and-son relations.It's wonderful how the director managed to cover so many topics for discussions in such a short movie with a few characters and was able to show all spheres of David's life.In conclusion, I would like to add that this movie is really worth to watch. If you are wit, clever and like long philosophical discussions, you should concentrate one hour and a half on this movie leaving all your problems behind.

danya-14565 David is a widower. He writes books about space and other planets. One's he decided to adopt a child. And when he firstly saw Dennis, he understood that he is his boy. Dennis is a special child, who spends all his time in a box. Dennis is sure that he came from Mars. And when the have met, an extraordinary story began. I liked the film very much. I think that here we can see themes of responsibility, identity, self-expression. The actors could show the relations between a father and a son, a "special" son. It is the example of a really good father. He didn't make the boy give up his idea, he really tried to help him. I think, that all parents should watch this film. It can teach to respect children in any case.