If you’ve read the book Martian Child, by the successful science fiction writer David Gerrold (despite a series of award-winning novels, he may be best known for the teleplay of the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”), you’ll know that it is a fictionalized account of his own experiences as a gay man who adopts a troubled, hyperactive eight-year-old boy. (In what is apparently a not uncommon reaction among emotionally abused children, the boy claims to be a Martian.) And if you’ve read the book, you may not recognize the film that has been made from it. As played by John Cusack, David is not gay but a grieving widower. (Or maybe he’s mourning the death of his fiancée—it’s not clear.) He decides to adopt a child because it’s what his late whatever-she-was wanted to do. And he recognizes some of his own youthful geekiness in this withdrawn (lose the hyperactivity) six-year-old (a much cuter age, you know).

Well, it’s not unusual for movies to change considerably from their source material, and Gerrold is on record as saying that while he would have preferred that the gay nature of the character had been let stand, he was more concerned with the issue of adoption of children who have passed the infant/toddler stage. Still, though, the movie is a mess. Creating a child who will tear at your heartstrings isn’t a hard thing to do, nor in and of itself is it an admirable one. There isn’t a single scene that will surprise you, even if you don’t as a rule watch the endless TV movies that this resembles, and few that ring true. And the supporting characters are so poorly drawn that you have to wonder why performers like Sophie Okonedo, Oliver Platt and Joan Cusack agreed to play them (well, I can hazard a guess about that last named). I neglected to mention Amanda Peet because for the life of me I couldn’t figure out who her character was even supposed to be. The credited director is Menno Meyjes, former staff writer for Steven Spielberg (he wrote the adaptation of The Color Purple), though Jerry (Airplane!) Zucker was later brought in for reshoots two years after principal photography was completed in 2005. Never a good sign, that. With so many good movies around these days, you’d have to be pretty desperate to waste your money on this one.