Metacritic reviews

Knockout performances by John Cusack and child actor Bobby Coleman help legitimize a whimsical but sententiously moralizing script.

Those who stick with Martian Child won't entirely avoid mush, but they will find terrific performances.

Amanda Peet exudes her patented mix of charm, beauty, humor and smarts as the best friend who may become more than a friend.

The film plot about the needy kid who redeems a male loner has been done to death, and on the surface, Martian Child just looks like another entry in the genre, a close follower to “About A Boy.”

The problem with Martian Child is that it wants to be a story about outcasts, but Dennis doesn't come off as a cute little rebel.

It's hard to say what, aside from novelty, is gained by having the boy believe he's from Mars, because the core emotion in the film comes from the simple, common premise of an adoptive father and son trying to forge a life together.

Martian Child certainly isn't much fun, unless you were desperately awaiting K-PAX with a kid instead of Kevin Spacey.

In drama, and just about everything else, almost is never enough. Which is why Martian Child, about the growing bond between an adult and child, never reaches us.

Cusack makes a half-hearted attempt to connect with Coleman, but chemistry is fatally absent and small wonder: Dennis is a unsettlingly strange creature who could well be from another planet.

Only in Hollywood can a movie about alien children be boring. Even if the kid isn’t really an alien (no spoilers), there’s still opportunity galore for the wild and the weird.