Fridae

Some time last year, a few hours of my life suddenly vanished into thin air. I wish I could tell everyone I don’t remember what had happened and pretend I was kidnapped by aliens, experimented on and mindwiped - but the truth is I was watching a film where aliens invade our planet to steal our brains.

The moral of the lesson? Some premises are suited for certain genres. If you have a goofy premise about an alien invasion, maybe you should make a comedy out of it. Or an animated picture. The folks behind Mars Needs Moms probably understand this basic principle and milk all the silly fun they can out of it.

If you really want to know, Martians kidnap the world’s most effective mothers so they can download their mothering skills to bring up a new generation of Martian toddlers. It’s not as campy or so bad that it’s good in the vein of Santa Claus Conquers The Martians, but it comes across as one of those films where everyone on the set had so much fun that the levity leaps off the screen into the cinema aisles.

Age-wise, the animated film seems targeted at ages 10 to 16. Metatextual jokes and references are at a minimum, as are gross bodily function jokes. Disney seems to be pushing very audibly at a pro-family agenda and the message seems to be that it’s okay if boys were more of mommy’s boys, if girls are allowed to play soldiers and guns, and if dads give more free hugs and took an active interest in changing baby diapers...

This may be Disney’s most countercultural animated children’s movie in years, actually.