Another installment in a current spate of magical realist films, "Martian Child" focuses on the primal fear of abandonment of a young orphaned boy named Dennis (Bobby Coleman) who professes to be from Mars.
John Cusack plays David Gordon, a widowed science fiction writer who sees himself in Dennis, and adopts the troubled boy.
With help from his sister Liz (Joan Cusack) and would-be girlfriend Harlee (Amanda Peet), David breaks through Dennis's defense mechanisms and teaches him to see life on terms he can relate to-like baseball.
John Cusack's favored co-actors (Oliver Platt, Joan Cusack, and Angelica Huston) add color to a sweet movie that intermittently gets bogged down by poor pacing.
Rated PG. 108 mins.
