Its Dark Out There! : Mars Needs Moms - Official Trailer [HD]

And the moral of the story is....Disney NEEDS Pixar. Not to knock veteran Robert Zemeckis and his Image Movers Digital Group, but this mostly lifeless and near colour-less bit of family reaffirmation (we suspect Mars needs Dads too ,but clearly that doesn't have the same ring to it).

The film begins auspiciously enough, with young Milo (initially voiced by Seth Green, but later re-done) in rebellion against his Mom (the excellent Joan Cusack) while Dad's away on the umpteenth extended business trip. Little do the know that they're both being watched - and not by Child Services. On the neighbouring Red Planet, earth mothers are being recruited to raise Martian children, especially girls, while the boys are chucked down to the waste zone (Mars apparently has the same waste management problems we do).

Pretty soon, Mom is zapped up in the tractor beam, and Milo, suddenly convinced of her absolute necessity in his life ("she feeds me1" she washes my clothes!") follows as a stowaway on board the Martian rocket. he lands on the planet and in short order meets Gribble, a grown man who, as a boy,  suffered the same fate that Milo has, nad has worked his way into the Martian underground, amusing himself with video games and revelling in arrested development.  The only other compelling character is of course, the villain, in this case a shrew of supervisor, a kind of female Ghaddafi - but without the smarmy charm of the Libyan colonel.

You can pretty much fill in the rest of the blanks. The bleakness of the monochrome must have become apparent to the producers as they introduce, late in the proceedings, a kind of paintbox splash of vibrance. Not that we're advocating brightness for its own sake, but a movie that's ostensibly about family needn't be as dark as squid ink just to portray alienation.

Mars Needs Moms has already proven outstanding in one respect: with its meagre returns on a massive outlay (near US$200m, we understand) it is gunning for biggest flop in recent history - and certainly the least successful Disney movie of the last ten years.

Maybe that'll teach 'em.