“Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.”
(Proverbs 23:22)
A few weeks ago I had the privilege of going to a movie on the lawn at my local library with my mom and my sisters. It was a great time with my family and I had fun. The movie was Disney’s “Mars Needs Moms.” I am naturally skeptical of the depth of animated films and Disney films in particular, but I was very impressed with this film.
The film centers on 9-year-old Milo and his mom. Milo is annoyed with his Mom because she makes him do things he doesn’t want to do. (She makes him eat Broccoli!) When he feeds it to the dog (and the dog subsequently vomits) she sends him to bed with no TV. He then retorts that he doesn’t need her and wishes she wasn’t his mom. Within a few moments Milo regrets what he says and as he goes to apologize, he sees his mom being kidnapped by Martians.
Milo hitches a ride on the spaceship and when he lands on Mars and sets off on an action packed adventure with new friends (A young man named Gribble and a teenage Martian girl name Ki) and rescues his Mom. As the movie progressed, a few thing things stuck out to me:
1) Mars is run by women. This is the reason they need moms. They use the moms to program the “NANNY BOTS” in motherhood. They are robots required to raise the girl babies because the women are busy running the planet.
2) The men are relegated to second class citizenship and raise the boys in the Martian Underground.
3) Milo and his friends find out that on Mars of old, families had two parent raising the children and when the Martians find out, they unite to depose the Evil Matriarch leader. The Martians are then shown enjoying family life as it was meant to be.
4) Milo (unlike so many kids today) had two parents that cared for him and loved each other!
As I watched this movie I couldn’t help but notice some real parallels between life on Mars and life on earth. Like Mars, Earth (particularly Western Culture) we no longer value motherhood (or fatherhood for that matter) as essential to raising well rounded children of high character. If we look at the Bible, we see the God put Adam and Eve together and told them to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:28) Thus the institution of the family!
This movie was fun and I laughed a lot, but I was gratified that it laid out (though maybe not on purpose) God’s plan for the family. I don’t know about Mars, but Earth does indeed need moms!
4/5 Stars
Speaking4him,
Andrew
