The Mitchells vs. the Machines

The Mitchells vs. the Machines - cute animated movie on Netflix. The main characters in this are a dad and a daughter, which is entirely reasonable except that it meant it had the problem where dads are entire people who make mistakes and have backstories and have to grow as people, while moms Facilitate and Mediate and Support. But the daughter was gay so maybe she'll get to be a person when she grows up. Okay, that was unfair, I mean, the discomfort with portraying mothers as anything other than nurturing-and-competent probably would extend to queer moms too, if there were more/any of them in children's media. And dads so rarely *get* to be competent, like, kids-movie dads always have to struggle to dad, at least a bit, and none of that is an invalid story, but I just get so tired of being served the same character beats. (Onward, blargh.) I talked about this a little bit with the kids and Q was like "but she did a really major part at the end" (or something like that, I can't remember his exact words now) and, yes, that was fun, but it's not the same as having character moments where we get inside her head. Anyways, other than our entire gender culture needing to be disassembled and rebuilt, it was a fun movie, with some genuinely funny sequences.

(As a discussion question, though, what's the biggest mistake or questionable choice you've ever seen a mom make in a children's movie? Ok, it's obviously Steven Universe, which has tons of actual character complexity around both Steven's mom and White Diamond as ubermom. Although even there, Steven's mom's choices are driving a lot of the plot, but she doesn't actually get to be there to reckon with them, part of being a Mom Who Has Actually Made Mistakes is absence from the story. I might have to go with Valka never trying to go back to Hiccup in the HTTYD series, which I love so much, because maybe they were cornered into it by what they set up in the first movie, but it still sets her up to be the most interesting mom I ever saw on the kids-movie screen. Or, no, wait, Brave, the Queen in Brave totally gets an Actual Damn Arc even more than Valka does. Well, okay then, we had one, all the way back in 2012, I suppose I should stop complaining.)