Top Ten Movies about Parenthood #7

Dear Frankie

Do you guys remember that guy called Gerard Butler? Yeah, the one who stared in several indie films and played Dracula in Dracula 2000?  Well this is him in his pre-heart-throb days, or you can say that this was the movie that began that painful chain of events.  The movie takes place in Scotland (Ga-der) where a single mom is mysteriously running from her abusive husband all across Scotland, dragging her young/def son named Frankie along with her.  Now while this lovely bunch of Scottish trash are running around, Frankie is under the impression that the reason why they're traveling so much is because they want to be around for when the father's boat docks, and the mom is feeding him these lies by pretending to be the father and sending him letters about his voyage, but don't worry, nothing could ever happen because the mother made up a fake name for the boat so that Frankie wouldn't question anything.  Well look what happened! The boat with that same fake name showed up and now she has to hire someone to pretend to be the father for the day that the boat is docked in the town (Datline's To Catch a Predator anyone?), and who better than Mr-Heart-throb-I-want-to-bake-eggs-on-your-chest Gerard Butler?!!!  I'm not going to say what happens next, but let me just tell you that this part of the movie will make a brother cry about as much as that time I was eating a lasagna filled with too much onions and watching Schindler's List at the same time.  What makes this an important parenting film for me is that although it appears the mother is just going crazy moving all the time and lying to her son about the father, they are lies that are only meant to protect her son, now I'm sure some of you would raise ethical questions that lying is never good, but by watching the movie and understanding the reasons why they are always on the run, things will make a little more sense.

 4 out of 5

Top Ten Movies about Parenthood #8

Easy A

Do you know those times in your life when you're conflicted on whether something is good or bad?  Examples for me would include Darth Vader, Captain Jack Sparrow, Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and a cheap hole in the wall Chinese restaurant that got poor reviews and will no doubt give you the runs during church, at a funeral, or during your daily morning run... but I digress.  Olive's parents in this movie are hysterical!  they are the kind of parents you want to be friends with, and whom you would have a lengthy Facebook chat with several pokes that would no doubt lead to someone getting Facebook pregnant (I don't even know if that's a thing).  So that's when I think that parents like that would be awesome, but the kind of style they have makes them more like good friends than actual parents, and that can have a negative affect on the children later on in life because of the lack of discipline going on.  Whoops!!  Looks like I'm getting ahead of myself, because I've neglected to give the movie's synopsis, which I don't think is too horrible because unless you've been living under a rock or in an Amish community you've probably already seen this movie.  This is a loose and modern adaptation of the classic Scarlet Letter book and follows the story of Olive and her lie about getting freaky with a college dude, which in turn came around and slapped an "A" on her Victoria's Secret wardrobe, dubbing her the slut of the town.  With this lie spreading, she chooses to use her newfound title to pretend to have sexy times with people who are gay or have low self esteem issues, so that they can appear straight or BAD-@$$ until High School ends; basically she's helping them out without actually "helping them out" if you know what I mean.  Obviously things get complicated for her, and you would think that the parents would be around more during this trial, because although they do give her counsel every once in a while they don't think anything of it and just let this "phase" just pass on by.

3 1/2 out of 5

Top Ten Movies about Parenthood #9

So What to Expect When You're Expecting was more of a cute, warm, and fuzzy approach to parenting, and although the cute, warm, and fuzzy parenting films are the more preferred ones to watch, a brother can't deny that there are some movies with examples of pretty crappy parenting!  Although some of these movies can appear bleak and can sometimes be borderline depressing, I feel that viewing them is important because it exposes the viewer to what some of the consequences are when a parent is not doing his/her job right.  if only they made a biopic about the childhood of the Kardashians!

Mama

Victoria and Lilly have what you would call a hard knock life! At a young age their mother passed away because of the father doing something stupid, and instead of turning himself in and trying to make a better life for the girls he instead makes plans to kill them.  But no fear, his murderous intent was stopped by floating skinny old women who looks like she has been rubbing poo all over herself, and who has a mouth the size of Steve Tyler’s.  Although the children were now lost and abandoned by their biological father, this new entity took them in and made them her children, and also provided them a good diet of cherries, and enough of them to clean out a crohns patient.  So with this new mother to love them, and this new cherry-diet giving them healthy colons, they seemed to have it made… grizzly Adams style.  Eventually the kids are found by their uncle and his punk-rock-child-hating girlfriend, and together they take them in and try to fix the damage that years of isolation had done to them.  This all sounds fine but their mother who took care of them in the woods is a jealous mother, like soccer moms, and she might not take kindly to the new parents.  I found this to be an interesting movie about parenthood, because the Mama creature isn’t such a bad person, quite the opposite, she’s just very protective of these two girls.  The problem is Mama is so protective that anyone who forms a relationship with the girls will be violated by this poopy skinned creature.  The moral of this story is that if you are too incredibly protective of your children, eventually you start killing everyone around you… makes sense.

4 out of 5

Top Ten Movies about Parenthood #10

Something new has happened to my wife and I!!  The Stork has decided to drop on by and present us with a baby boy, and I'm assuming he arrived by Stork, and that he wasn't created the way it was shown to me by Jack and Rose in Titanic.  I was going to go back to my African American roots and name him Demarcus, but then caved to a more Celtic name because it was just straight awesome, For Certain reasons lets call him D for short.  Now that my son is born it made me reflect back on some of the better movies out there with a central theme of Parenthood, and let me tell you there are a lot.  To narrow them down to only a few, I'm going to give you my top 10 Parenthood movies that I feel every parent needs to view at least once.

10.  What to Expect When You’re Expecting

Everybody wants a baby right now!!  Some are prepared, some are not, some want a baby, and some don’t give a crap, and then some are Jennifer Lopez.  The movie takes the Love Actually way of telling a story of pregnant women, meaning that there are several characters in different stories involved in some ways of having a baby.  Some of the stories are noteworthy and some are just unrealistically stupid, but the one that stood out to me the most is between my 2^nd love Elizabeth Banks and Ben Falcone.  Their story is one of a couple parents who desperately want kids but are unable, even though Banks owns a baby shop.  Despite all the trials/troubles they were finally able to get pregnant, and even though Ben’s dad gets his wife pregnant at the same time with twins and treat it like it's some kind of competition, Falcone and Banks are extremely grateful for their child, and treat him like he’s the greatest treasure on earth… I'm hoping that the baby they have in the movie is a boy because otherwise I would be sounding really stupid right now.

3 out of 5