Man meets boy struggling with “alien nation” (8/10)

Martian Child moves right along, you might say right out of the box, inasmuch as that’s where we first meet the boy Dennis (Bobby Coleman)… who thinks he’s been sent here from Mars.  Dennis is a resident, with several other apparently human children, at a Seattle-ish area foster home.  David (John Cusack) is a recent widower.  His wife was a passionate and loving woman who wanted them to adopt, since they couldn’t have children.  When David first shows up at the foster home, he’s informed by one of the other children that Dennis is the one standing inside an upside-down dishwasher shipping box (to protect him from the sun), with a peep hole in the side.

David, a successful science fiction author, does a lot of soul-searching—there are also a few charming scenes where we see David talking with Dennis and getting a handle on the Martian-child way of looking at the world—before he finally decides to go ahead.  David fills out the paperwork, satisfies the stern boss man of the state fostercare system Lefkowitz (Richard Schiff) then they go back to David’s modern, swank digs and start building a relationship. Referring to the house…

“Just think of it as a bigger box.”
— David Continue reading →