Mars Needs Moms: Movie Review (where's the thumbs down icon?)

We were given passes to see a preview of Mars Needs Moms (taken from the popular children's book) at the Franklin Institute.  I took my second grade daughter and two of her friends.  Here is her review, with mine following:


Mars Needs Moms is a cool movie. I went to see it with two of my friends. One of my friends thought it was scary the other one said it was freaky.  I thought it was funny, freaky, awesome, great, and very action-packed.  My mom thought so too. 


I liked the martians, Ki , Gribble, Milo, and Milo’s mom. Gribble was really funny. The movie was about a boy named Milo. His mom got kidnapped by martians because she was so good at being a mom. Milo goes to Mars to try to save his mom by getting her out from a machine that shocks people and makes their memory go away. It was very exciting, but the end of the movie was a happy ending.    

While I agree that it was action-packed (one crisis after another), I had a big issue with part of the plot.  Most of the Martians had loc'd hair (as in "dreadlocks").  And while they were the "good guys" of the movie, there was also a point where they were referred to as "dumb as a box of rocks" and generally were portrayed that way.  Sitting sandwiched between my daughter (with loc'd hair) and a woman with long locs of her own, I found that line and the portrayal of those characters, totally offensive.  I usually try to avoid reading too much into children's cartoons, but this didn't leave much room for interpretation.  This was definitely one of those times when I wish I'd previewed the movie before my children saw it.  If I had, they would never have seen it at all.