The trailer for the latest (and possibly final) Robert Zemeckis-produced motion-capture opus Mars Needs Moms has arrived and, to it's credit, the CGI humans here do not look quite as much like horrifying corpses as they did in The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol. The premise is cute, as far as this sort of thing goes, and some of the space landscapes are rendered beautifully...and yet, more than any other trailer recently, Mars Needs Moms makes me yearn for old-school animation.
For all of it's eye candy, I swear that the trailer does not contain one image that's as evocative or soulful as this illustration from the Berkeley Breathed book the film is based on. I'm reasonably confident that a third dimension will not change this. The trailer's also short on wit and long on a pretty annoying sidekick voiced by Dan Fogler. It looks harmless enough...but why bother?
Verdict: Read the book.