MARTIAN CHILD, PG

David Gordon (John Cusak) is a recently widowed, science fiction writer. His late wife had wanted to adopt a child, and so he begins to think that he should do it, even though he is alone. He meets Dennis, a little boy that spends his days at the foster home hiding in a box. The sun bothers him...because he's from Mars. David finds himself drawn to this seemingly disturbed child, and little by little, David befriends him. Slowly, Dennis learns to trust him a little. So David begins the adoption process, telling Dennis that this will be a trial basis so that he can see if wants to live with David permanently. At first, David thinks that his love will help Dennis get a grip on reality. But Dennis maintains that he is a Martian on a mission to learn how humans live. In addition, he insists that "they" will come back to get him soon. Everyone knows that Dennis can't really be from Mars, but he does a few things that make David think twice about Dennis's planetary citizenship. However, the adoption committee keeps questioning if this child is thriving in David's care, so he tells Dennis that he needs to "act" like everyone else. Things go unrealistically well with them, but eventually David becomes frustrated with Dennis' "fantasy" stories and finds that he needs to discipline Dennis. Dennis reacts by running to the place where "they" are going to pick him up and take him back to Mars.

At the same time, David is struggling in his writing career. He is obligated to write a sequel to his latest successful book. But his creative juices are just not flowing in that direction. So he writes a book called "Martian Child", which, as you might guess, has been inspired by Dennis. He loves it - he thinks its great. His publisher, however, tells him "This might be great, but we just want you to do what we want you to do!" Aha! The light bulb goes on for David. Now he knows how Dennis feels.

The best quote of the movie is this:
Sometimes we forget that children have just arrived on the earth. They are a little like aliens, coming into beings as bundles of energy and pure potential, here on some exploratory mission and they are just trying to learn what it means to be human. For some reason Dennis and I reached out into the universe and found each other, Never really know how or why. And discovered that I can love an alien and he can love a creature. And that's weird enough for both of us.

Joan Cusak costars as David's sister, and Amanda Peet plays his best friend. A funny detail that I noticed was that in the scene where a teacher expels Dennis from school, the shot of her face as she's speaks to David has a picture of George W. Bush behind her. And, when the "Adoption Committee" grills Dennis about his life with David, there's a picture of George W. Bush behind them as well. Not sure if that was intentional, but it seem curious that his photo was conspicuously there in the scenes with the rigid, self-righteous characters.

MARTIAN CHILD wasn't a great movie, but it was an enjoyable, sweet, heartwarming story.