Martian Child (**3/4)

Calculatedly heartwarming, or “heartwarming” at any rate, this drama finds widower John Cusack adopting a bright but troubled six-year-old who claims to be from the Red Planet. He’s got other issues too, like an aversion to sunlight, a whisper for a voice, and an insistence on eating a certain breakfast cereal. Bobby Coleman plays the boy well enough to keep him from seeming him like a collection of mannerisms, though to be honest I didn’t warm to him as a character. The whispering, you know. Cusack’s character, a fantasy writer, likes him, though; fortunately, he’s an actor who seems incapable of overemoting. He never seems to be speaking down to the boy, or to us. There’s some minor conflict about whether the state will take the boy, as if a parade of superior adoptive families are lining up to adopt a messed-up six-year-old. And there’s the whole thing about being from Mars. But pretty much, the movie is everything I expected to be. If all you’re expecting is a nice story about a guy and a kid helping each other feel less alone, this is it. Not too sappy (but a little), not too surprising.

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