Starring John Cusack, Bobby Coleman, and Amanda Peet. Rated G. Opens Friday, November 2, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Everyone feels like an outsider at some point during childhood, but that notion is entertainingly hyperextended in Martian Child , a darker-toned About a Boy involving extraterrestrial adoption.

Instead of trying to impress women with his tenuous fatherhood, the hesitant hero attempts to fill the space left by the death of his wife two years earlier. An admitted oddball in his own right, science-fiction writer David (John Cusack) can take on parenthood because of the free time, money, and fine digs that have come with best-selling success.

His specialty is convoluted space sagas, but Mr. Imagination is woefully unprepared to deal with a diminutive grade-schooler (strangely appealing Bobby Coleman, who was nine during the shoot) who is convinced that he is a visitor from Mars. Aside from a propensity for wearing gravity belts and Michael Jackson–level sun block, the kid steals personal things and is an instant target at school.

The adoption is a nonstarter, according to David's blustery sister (Joan Cusack, who injects some needed humour, alongside Oliver Platt, as the writer's overly ingratiating agent). There's also resistance from a state review board, headed by The West Wing 's Richard Schiff at his most officious, but this feels like a screenplay contrivance to make the path a bit rockier.

Scriptwriters Seth Bass and Jonathan Tolins, working from a semi-autobiographical novel by David Gerrold, make it too easy for David. This is helped along by Dutch-born director Menno Meyjes (who also worked with Cusack in the Canadian-made Max ) in his casting of gorgeous Amanda Peet as a lifelong pal who is conveniently available for romantic support–the kind that everyone but our hero can sense from the start. Mostly, Martian Child chronicles very human connection, but the movie ultimately gets to you with the sheer quality of its writing, not with sentiment or story. Only Cusack could so successfully nail some of his wordy monologues–especially one great speech about the existence of life, any life, in the universe. "Isn't that weird," he finally asks the boy. "Isn't that weird enough ?"

Link: Martian Child home page