definedancing: The elaboration is fantastic and much appreciated! It’s always good to see in-depth commentary here.
Can’t disagree with you too much about the writing on MNM!, although I saw it more as a nightmarish deadline scenario in which emotions/plot (or character/story) were self-evident and didn’t require a lot of exposition. That’s especially true of your hidden-spoiler point–yeah, it’s corny, but the behavior is almost universally understood (and would be duplicated) by people of the particular demographic. Maybe MNM! is best appreciated by parents who can remember how it felt to be kids, and that’s not exactly a wide (or ideal) demographic for ticket sales. Also, it seemed that there was sufficient negative word of mouth in advance that poor box-office figures were largely predecided. As for the mo-cap and animation, I thought the Martians came off much better than the humans, and Gribble was OK. Ki was a treat in all aspects. More to come on mo-cap in another topic…
It would be great to learn how much of the production was consciously informed by Invaders From Mars (1953). The similarities are numerous and striking, but maybe such comments belong on the Mars Needs Moms! topic.
Agreed, at the end of the day, Mars Needs Moms! was certainly not as good as it could have been, much like other 2011 movies in the animation realm. It seems like all of them (that I saw) lacked that extra oomph to push them into the zone of Undeniable Quality for which Pixar is famous. It ain’t a crime, but it does make a body wonder what was in the water coolers.
No, IV, you’re not the crazy one…that would be I, who often look too deeply into the forest, miss the trees, and go straight for the Martians…I mean the mushrooms.
I should check out Mars Needs Moms to see what the jabber about the story is. It should add another film to my list, so why not? I expect it to be lower then Gnomeo and Juliet.
Ballboi, it was tough to pick a better (or least worse) between those two, which were close. Speaking of updating the list–after yesterday’s viewing of Tintin…
Arthur Christmas (very nice but not tremendous)
Winnie the Pooh (short and sweet, but how much hunny can one eat?)
Rio (fun but light as a feather)
Rango (excellent for two acts, diminished by the third)
The Adventures of Tintin* (a fun and cool ride, somewhat hampered by technical details)
Gnomeo and Juliet (fun, with a weak ending)
Mars Needs Moms* (better than its reputation)
Hoodwinked Too! (not awful, but easily the bottom of the 2011 barrel)
[ * = motion capture…I don’t consider it animation, but others might]
The other thing is that many movies haven’t been released on DVD yet, such as Puss in Boots and Adventures of TinTin. I consider my list of 2011 movies still incomplete.