Three Recent Films Aimed at Families Dramatize One of Kids’ Biggest Fears

What’s going on with family films? All the mothers in them are dead. It’s no wonder women have been complaining about the lack of good roles in Hollywood movies for years.

Consider three recent releases aimed at family audiences:

“Alaska” is a family adventure movie filled with breathtaking photography, likable characters and a suspenseful plot. It tells the story of a teenage brother and sister who are moved to Alaska by their father to escape the pain caused by the death of his wife, their mother. The kids set out on a journey pitting them against the forces of nature and the nature of man. Along the way they befriend a cuddly polar bear cub--whose mother is also dead.

“Bogus” is the charming tale of a young boy’s relationship with an imaginary friend. Here Gerard Depardieu springs out of a coloring book to help the boy deal with the death of his mother and the need to move in with his mother’s foster sister, Whoopi Goldberg. The car crash that kills the mother is especially graphic and disturbing.

Finally, there’s “Fly Away Home,” the story of a 13-year-old girl and her relationship to an orphaned flock of geese. Anna Paquin stars as a disgruntled teenager who, after the car crash death of her mother in New Zealand, is forced to move to Canada with her father and his girlfriend. The opening scene is dark and foreboding with a car turned over on its roof and the endless spinning of a wheel.

All three films are enjoyable and well-intentioned, but as my 11-year-old stepdaughter groaned in the back seat with two of her friends, “not another dead mother story.” These are family films aimed at family audiences with children as young as 2 or 3. And yet, they all contain, as a major plot device, the often graphic depiction of a child’s greatest fear.

Children are more likely to fear the death of a parent than their own death. So here we go again explaining to young children that it’s only a movie--nothing’s going to happen to your mommy. But it’s happening a lot on the screen.

Roger Ebert, in a review of “Fly Away Home,” described the death of the mother and the car crash in New Zealand that “nicely accounts for Oscar winner Paquin’s accent.” Couldn’t she have just been visiting for the summer? That’s what children of divorced families do. Now the irony of her losing her mother and the geese losing their mother is not lost on this writer, but aren’t puberty and a bumbling father enough for one girl to deal with? And if the accent was such a problem they could have hired a dialogue coach.

Maybe it’s just a habit for screenwriters. Kill the mother and it automatically ups the stakes for the children; they get the audience’s support and sympathy. But children already have an audience’s support and sympathy simply because they’re children. That’s how society survives.

Dead mothers in movies aren’t anything new, especially in Disney’s animated films. The quintessential example is Bambi’s mother dying in the first act of that Disney classic. Other Disney examples include “The Little Mermaid,” “Cinderella,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Pocahontas” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” But there are also live-action examples, some vintage (all the Shirley Temple films, “The Sound of Music,” “Oliver”) and some more recent (“Free Willy,” “A Little Princess,” “James and the Giant Peach,” “Angels in the Outfield”).

Then there are countless derivations on the theme, like “Home Alone,” where the mother is in a different part of the country; “Baby’s Day Out,” where the mother stays home; and “Flipper,” where Elijah Wood is shipped off by his mother to spend summer with that great role model Paul Hogan.

Many filmmakers must share the perception that having a living mother makes for a boring life. Surely no adventure or challenge can take place where there’s a secure mom at home fixing peanut butter sandwiches.

Often, the dead mother is not essential to the story. Paquin could have taught her geese to “Fly Away Home” without the car crash. Mom could have been waiting at home in “Alaska,” or even out in the helicopter looking for those two adventurous teenagers. And the cub could have been lost instead of orphaned.

What we’re left with is a lack of positive mothering role models for our children. Women in film don’t always have to compete in the workplace or on the police force or constantly prove they can exist and succeed in a man’s world. Family films can show women as mothers who are successful, fulfilled and challenged in a human way.

Diane Lane played Robin Williams’ mother in “Jack.” Her role was physical, emotional, powerful and well-constructed within the context of a nuclear family. Jack’s struggles and his life’s peculiar adventure were not any less profound because his mother was around.

“The River Wild” showed Meryl Streep as a strong and powerful mother. It was great to watch a talented and capable woman on an adventure with her family. It would be great to see the likes of Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange and Goldie Hawn playing the parts of regular moms in family films. Remember Diane Keaton in the recent “Father of the Bride” movies? Her strength was the only thing that kept Steve Martin from flying off into outer space.

The current generation of families, extended families, divorced families, same-sex parent families and single-parent families all go to family films. I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for those children in our lives that have lost their mothers. And I am sure the reality is much harder than we could ever imagine on a movie screen. So let’s stop trying. Moms are great. I want to see more of them in the movies.