Movie Date

Last Thursday I took ML on a movie date the the fancy new theatre in our city. She was going to spend the weekend with her father, so I thought a Thursday night outing would be a nice treat.

I took her to the new movie Horton Hears a Who, as I have heard lots of mom and kids say that it was very cute. Well the animation was very cute, but the story .... not so cute.

In this movie, it is said many times that the Who has 96 daughters and he schedules them to spend something like exactly 12 seconds with each, but he has 1 son. He dotes on him, even though he won't speak, won't participate in the family, telling him that he will take over the business... you see where this is going. The original Dr. Seuss story has none of this "plot line", just that there are lots of kids and the youngest/smallest saves the day. Well in the movie version, it isn't the youngest or the smallest, it is the only son.

Now maybe you think am over-reacting, reading too much into a children's cartoon, but I don't think so. Why couldn't the story just have been one of the kids, one of the sons? One of the daughters? Why the only son, who got all his dad's attention, and the only one who was being groomed to take over the family career?

Why must the movie industry only give girls 'princesses' or relegate them to bit players? Why do we still need to have story lines with the prodigal son who is the one to save the day? Where are the strong girl characters?

/rant

(I have soemthing to say related to adoption as well if you want more rantings of a single mom)