Milo (Seth Green) has a great mom (Joan Cusack), but he doesn't appreciate her, like most kids. Mars, however, sees her worth and kidnaps her in the night, with Milo not far behind as he tries to rescue her. Once on Mars, Milo is stunned to see militant groups of female Martians, controlled by The Supervisor (Mindy Sterling), an elderly but stern female Martian. Soon, Milo is spotted and he's on the run, only to be rescued by a disembodied voice giving him directions. He finds himself dumped in the trash pile, having been saved by Gribble (Don Fogler, Take Me Home Tonite), a man who once was a child in Milo's exact same position. Gribble has made his life hiding in the trash pile, with the male Martians who dance around all day. Together, Gribble and Milo band together to rescue Milo's mom.
As Milo sneaks through the Martian base, he sees colorful spray painted drawings painted by a mystery "tagger," and just as he is about to be nabbed by one of the Martian police, this same artistic Martian rescues him. Ki (Elisabeth Harnois) is a female Martian infatuated with all things human, having once seen some TV transmissions from back in the 60's. She's all about "flower power" and is more than happy to help Milo and Gribble in their attempts to rescue Milo's mom.
As their adventure takes them below the surface of Mars, they discover that things weren't always like this and they hope to be able to not only rescue Milo's mom, but maybe make Mars a better, more family-centric place, like the old days. The more Milo strives to rescue his mom before his sunrise deadline, when the Martians will perform an irreversible procedure on her, the more he realizes how much he appreciates her now that he is so close to losing her. Can he pull it off and get them both home in one piece?
Mars Needs Moms looks incredibly crisp on Blu-ray. Since the film was done entirely through a process called performance capture, it's not typical animation, so you can recognize the actors' faces in their animated counterparts. Milo looks like a young Seth Green and his voice has been altered to match. Gribble looks just like Dan Fogler and Milo's mom has Joan Cusack's incredible expressions. Mars looks amazing in this CG medium and the film really benefits from the high def treatment, but as I mentioned before, it's all a little bit eerie.
Special features include a featurette called Fun with Seth where you get a brief insight into the antics that went on during filming, while Martian 101 gives some insight into how the Martian language was created for the film. Deleted scenes are interesting as they are in various stages of completion and it's especially cool to see the scenes where the actor's digitized faces are pasted on the animated bodies. Lastly, you can view the entire film with optional commentary by Seth Green, Simon Wells and Dan Folger, as well as a picture-in-picture of the performance capture version called Life on Mars, which is really cool for anyone interested in this type of filmmaking.
The acting is great and it's really cool to see the CG versions of actors like Seth Green and Dan Fogler, but the movie was still weird looking, even though I appreciate the amazing technology behind it. Overall, I enjoyed Mars Needs Moms well enough, but the film is fairly dark and I would imagine it would be rather frightening for small children. Mom-napping, death, firing squads, suffocation... these aren't the kinds of things that really benefit young kids. If you have young children, I'd pass. Older kids may enjoy it more, but overall, it just wasn't my favorite CG animated film.
