Another one my wife caught. Coming soon to a theater near you, courtesy of Disney Pictures: Mars Needs Moms
From the author’s website:
Milo doesn’t get it: What’s the big deal about moms? They’re just slavedriving broccoli bullies. Yet they are worshipped the world over! Perhaps even the galaxy over—because here come Martians and they’re after one thing only: moms. Milo’s mom in particular. Who better to drive them to soccer practice and to pizza parties? That’s quite a long way to come for a mom—could it be that Milo has been overlooking something special?
And from the School Library Journal review on the Amazon page for the book:
Milo just doesn’t get what’s so special about moms. As far as he can see, all they do is nag you to eat your broccoli and send you up to bed when you tint your little sister purple. So who needs them? Well, as it turns out, Martians do (they grow motherless from the ground like potatoes) and one night, three Martians sneak into Milo’s house and steal his sleeping mother. The boy races after them, grabs onto the ladder of their spaceship, and boards it just as it blasts off. Once on Mars, he looks outside and finally understands why the Martians need a mom so badly–They needed driving to soccer! And to ballet! And to playdates, parks, and pizzas! Plus cooking and cleaning and dressing and packing lunches and bandaging boo-boos! Just then, he trips and falls and is saved by–you guessed it! And the sympathetic aliens take the boy and his mother home. The story ends with Milo waking up in his mother’s bed, cuddling next to her. In typical Breathed form, the illustrations are lush, plush, and over-the-top with color, attitude, and craziness. The picture of the Martians trying to bait a mom with what looks suspiciously like a brand name Grande coffee on a line is hilarious, to say the least. Share this witty and sweet tale with young readers and their moms for a wacky treat.–Lisa Gangemi Kropp, Middle Country Public Library, Centereach, NY
While I haven’t found any reference to the father in plot summaries, IMDB does show someone cast for the role of Milo’s father. Maybe they show his father in the trailer for the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LTPLANzHpk
Nope, I didn’t see a father there either. But while this is ostensibly a movie about appreciating your mom, the part they want to show off appears to be more a young boy teaming up with an older male (father?) figure. Could it be that Disney knows many boys are craving a father figure, and chose to highlight this aspect in the trailer?
Maybe in the alternate trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omqztA7aRO4
Nope, but we learn that Moms are Earth’s most valuable resource. Also, before you assume the author is either a feminist or a mangina (or both), you should know the following from his Bio on Wiki:
raised in Houston, Texas, Breathed attended Westchester High School.[1] He was a cheerleader his senior year and graduated in 1975.
and
During the middle of September 1990, while visiting a factory in England, Mr. Breathed noticed he received odd, humorous looks from the workers upon hearing his name. After inquiring about the reason for their strange looks, he learned that his nickname, “Berke,” is a homophone with “Berk”, a vulgar term for a vagina in Cockney rhyming slang (“Berkeley Hunt“).[10]
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