How I Accidentally Let My Son Watch The Most Anti-Feminist Movie EVER

Headline: The Homicidal Feminist Enjoys A Quiet Moment Of Thought, Plotting.

Hey, did you know that all feminists are man-hating, homicidal bitches who are ceaselessly plotting to DESTROY MOTHERHOOD? And that they also want to shove men into the trash heap of history and steal your mother’s memories and then incinerate her (because, of course), followed by a whole lotta history denying, and all the while, as I said,  DESTROYING MOTHERHOOD?

Yeah, me neither.

Last weekend, my oldest had a basketball practice and my middle child had a sleepover and I promised Leo he could watch a movie. So we go through the Netflix list (by the way: Dear Netflix, GET SOME BETTER KID MOVIES! Honestly.) and he says MARS NEEDS MOMS MARS NEEDS MOMS, and I was like, “Sure kid, knock yourself out. I have to clean the kitchen and mop the floor and vacuum the rug and fold the laundry, but I’ll watch the end of it with you.”

And so it was agreed.

And thus did he and I blithely skip down the Primrose Path of Ignorance into the Slimy Ooze of…..whatever the hell that movie was.

And there was my son, watching a wrinkly old prune of an in-charge lady-alien (because power and authority are, apparently, murder on the skin, and feminism will ultimately make us ugly. Hollywood has spoken. WHY WOULD THEY LIE?) gazing down at an unsuspecting mother, all the while plotting to download her brain into her baby-raising robots, and then incinerate her body into ashes, leaving her broccoli-hating son bereft and alone. Observe:

SPOILER: The pretty one turns good in the end!

There they gaze from their Marsy heights, plotting. Oh, look, they say. A mother who makes her son take out the trash and bosses him around. SHE’S PERFECT.

The kid, seeing his mother taken into a scary spaceship, does what any self-respecting kid does: He hops on and prepares himself for interstellar hijinks and a little alien ass-kicking. Because, of course.

What he discovers when he gets there is that Mars has been TYRANNIZED BY LADIES for some time now, and as a result, it is a cold, heartless, joyless place. There is no color. The babies are raised by robots. And everything is harped on endlessly by the prune-faced bossylady dictator alien.

Because that’s what feminists are, right? Prune-faced bossyladies. Thanks for clarifying, Hollywood.

During the kid’s (I guess his name is Milo, and he was originally going to be voiced by Seth Green, until some studio exec realized that having a grown man play the voice of a nine year old boy is 1. Super Creepy, and 2. the final atom in a supernova that turns the whole thing into a universe-sucking black hole) various adventures adventures in soul-less Mars, evading the aliens that want to kill him -

-oh, because, in addition to hating men and wanting to destroy motherhood, feminists also enjoy killing children. Are you keeping up? Good, because Hollywood is really covering a lot of ground here. -

Milo (god, I hate using that name, because I’ve never met a Milo that I didn’t like, and it pains me that their name is now associated with this god-awful movie) escapes into an endless tunnel that’s actually the trash chute (because sci-fi ALWAYS has kick-ass trash chutes) and discovers where all the Martian men are.

In the trash heap. (Get it? SYMBOLISM! Thanks, Hollywood!)

CHECK OUT THE RASTA DADS!

And it’s all RASTA DADS TO THE RESCUE!

And along the way, Milo discovers that he really loves his mom and stuff, and she wasn’t so bad for making him eat his broccoli and take out the trash, and all the sexless, joyless Martian ladies are all AWWWWWWWW.

And then he discovers that the bossylady has been lying to the populace this whole time, telling them that Martians have always been raised by robots programmed with the downloaded brains of Earthling mothers (Really?) and that long ago Martians had real families too

(and by “real” we mean “nuclear families.” Mom plus dad. None of that new-agey business.)

(Also: GENDER BINARY, PEOPLE. Because Hollywood knows – it KNOWS!)

GENDER BINARY TO THE RESCUE!

And then the Martian ladies are all giving googly eyes to the trash-heap-living Rasta Dads that they’ve imprisoned all these years, and they shun the prune-faced dictator lady calling her “The Evil One” (I swear to god, I am not making this up) and then Milo saves his mom and this other dude who has been living secretly on Mars ever since he was ten and his mom had been taken by the Martians and incinerated right in front of him (My god people! This is a CHILDREN’S MOVIE!) decides he’s in love with one of his Martian lady tormentors, and he decides to stay, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Needless to say, when I went back upstairs after all of my stereotypically mom-ish chores, poor Leo was weeping uncontrollably, then makes a flying leap across the room into my arms and clutches my shoulder and drenches my shirt with his tears, and says, “Mom, I will never let that ugly lady burn you up, never never never never never.”

So, of course, I am the worst mother alive.

Now, most of you have probably already heard about how horrible this movie is and have steered clear, but on the off-chance that any of you, like me, have been living under a damn rock, then for the LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND PURE AND HOLY stay away from this awful, awful movie.

And, while you’re at it, donate some money to NOW or the Girl Scouts or whatever.

Also: GO FEMINISM

(and screw Hollywood)

P.S. Mars Needs Moms originally was a picture book by Berkeley Breathed, and it is fantastic. Totally worth a purchase. And here is his visual indicator of what he thought of the turkey of a movie they made of his completely charming and whimsical book: