Other than “Beowulf,” his most successful performance-capture film to date, Robert Zemeckis has chosen to deploy this system in children’s films.

    This film from Zemickis’ ImageMovers Digital and Walt Disney Pictures has been shot and will be projected in Disney Digital 3D as well as in Imax 3D.

    It is based on a children’s novel by cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, who admits the book came in reaction to a disobedient* son expressing strong dissatisfaction with even having a nagging* mother. So, the story about a mom kidnapped* by Martians and her rescue* by her young son is filled with emotions*.

    For this film, Zemeckis turns directing chores* over to Simon Wells, who directed “The Time Machine” and co-directed the animated “The Prince of Egypt.” Wells and his wife Wendy adapted* the book with nearly every plot turn proving that kids need moms.

    Milo, age 9, is the focal* point. He is enacted by Seth Green and voiced by a much younger Seth Dusky, age 11. Joan Cusack is Mom but since she spends most of the time under lock and key, the major roles fall to the very funny Dan Folger as Mars’ only other human, a techo-wiz* named Gribble; Elisabeth Harnois as Ki, a rebellious young Martian who learned English watching ‘70s sitcoms; and Mindy Sperling as the nasty* Martian leader whose body appears as mummified* as her heart.

    Designer Doug Chiang has a grand time turning the Red Planet into a giant fun ride from Martians with triangular* heads, no real noses and otherworldly bodies and gaits* to an underground world of simplicity and sterility*. Females run the place while men — Gribble calls them the Hairy Tribe Guys — get tossed down chutes* with the garbage as they’re the most expendable* resource on the planet.

    The movie is set up as a race against the clock by Milo to save his mom but the film finds time to take in the Martian civilization in passing, a gag*-filled and lighthearted re-imagining of our own world if women ruled it.

    The movie shrugs off any real attempt at science fiction other than oxygen helmets* for the surface of Mars. The characters run around those surfaces in short sleeves in what should be a -10 degrees Celsius climate and make the round trip from Earth to Mars, which should take about 18 months, in half a minute.(SD-Agencies)