2 Guys 1 Couch

“There's no way I can pay you back...
But the plan is to show you that I understand...
you are appreciated” – “Dear Mama” Tupac Shakur

Mothers, in general, don’t get the recognition that they should. The mothers in film usually take a backseat (sometimes literally) to the leading men. We love them, but they don’t always love us the way they should. Yet, we can’t live without them. Usually, they’re just doing what is best for everyone.

Movie mothers come in all packages ranging from ditzy to action-hero to just down-right evil. You can be as critical as you like of mothers, but nonetheless we would not be here without them. Neither would some of our favorite movie characters.

We normally don’t see the beauty in their lessons until much further down the road. The toughest job for a mother is telling you the truth. You need moms in the world to tell you that you aren’t good enough to go on American Idol. Moms stop us from making fools of ourselves.

They also help us pursue our dreams. No one can build you up like your mother can. There are times in our lives when mothers don’t give us the best advice. No one is perfect and especially not our mothers. More than likely, they couldn’t make the cut on American Idol either (not to mention the whole age limit thing). We just don’t have the heart to tell them or they’ll rip our heads off.    

Here is a list of my personal favorites. No, you won’t see Sally Fields here. Not saying she isn’t great, but Steele Magnolias is the most depressing movie I’ve ever seen (tied with Beaches). Let’s be honest, most “Oscar worthy” performance come with a bit of a snore-factor. So, get ready to have a little fun with this list. If you don’t like it… blame my Mom.

The mom in Back to the Future might have had a little explaining to do when her son, Marty, ended up looking like… 1955 Marty.

George McFly may have scratched his head for a minute as he recalled Marty asking them to name their son after him. All kidding aside, Marty almost ruined everything. He nearly bagged his own mother and with every misstep he took he was closer to stopping his own beginning. Yeah, the movie is pretty deep when you really think about it.

Ultimately he fixed it and then some. He couldn’t help it that his mom was a hormone-driven teenage girl waiting for her Calvin Kline. Lea Thompson is a perfect blend of girl next door and kook, but in the end George McFly was her “density… I mean destiny.”

I wanted to get through this without mentioning Disney (or crying again), but I couldn’t let Bambi’s Mom’s memory just fade away that easily. Gone, but not forgotten is she. Let this movie forever be a lesson to us all. Don’t let your kids watch Disney movies unless you are ready to do some serious explaining… I’m just saying.

Mama Fratelli is kind of a Saint. She had these two hoodlum sons that obviously had no idea how to run an Italian restaurant. Then, she had Sloth down in the cellar. He was a disfigured gentle giant of a man that she dropped on his head when he was a baby. That’s no one else’s business. That should have stayed in-house. Mama Fratelli was protecting him from the outside world. They gave him Baby Ruths and let him watch television. That’s a pretty awesome life if you ask me.

Now come these kids meddling in their affairs and she’s supposed to let them cash in at their expense? One-Eyed Willie’s treasure could have been exactly what the Fratelli’s business needed to turn things around.

This is the woman that sparked the MILF phenomenon. She was a cougar before we knew what cougars were, and I don’t mean the cats. Stifler’s Mom is a sexy scotched-up coug that leads the nerdy Finch into manhood. So, she wasn’t the best mother in the world, and she sleeps with her son’s friends. At least she was living her life. This woman had to deal with raising Steve Stifler. For the minimal amount of screen time she sure did make an enormous impact on these movies as well as pop culture. Good news, we can all look forward to Jennifer Coolidge reprising this role in the upcoming American Reunion.

Let’s just say that Linda Hamilton worked out. If that’s your thing, then cool. She just had a lot of muscle and she scared me. She also mastered the one-handed shotgun pump. I’ve never held “ah shotgun” but I imagine that’s very hard to do. Sarah Connor is the ultimate action hero mom. Yeah, so she made a mistake. She also owned up to it. She did what most single women would have done if given a crack at a soldier from the future. Had she “played it safe” we wouldn’t have John Connor. Without John Connor she wouldn’t be on this list and kicking some major robot tail.

It can be cumbersome for a mother to raise boys. It would be horrible to have amnesia. It would be an epic failure to wake up from amnesia to learn that the forkless Joe who was working on your Yacht has duped you into raising his three hellions.

She could have easily had Kurt Russell’s character sent to prison for kidnapping. So, let me get this straight… Give up millions of dollars, live in a shack, be married to a criminal and become the mother of three prepubescent boys? That sounds like a wonderful idea. Lucky for him, Goldie was a good sport about it.

In Kurt’s defense, she was horrible to him. He saw his chance and capitalized. I loved Goldie in this role. I could always relate to Overboard because the boys ruled the house in my family. My brother and I both thought we were Pee Wee Herman at one time or another. Who didn’t?

Yeah, so she wasn’t the kids’ real mother, but she earned their respect… Oh wait, but now their all rich. Score!

Sometimes the best thing about mothers is when they leave… Like Catherine O’Hara did in Home Alone. Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) reaped the benefits and so did we. Although she did all that she could to get back to this little bastard, her hands were pretty much tied over in Paris.

Child services would have looked at the fact that she left her child alone at home and told her that maybe she should have thought of that before she decided to have five kids. Luckily, she couldn’t make it back right away and thus gave us a movie filled with awesome booby twaps… “That’s what I said, booby twaps.”

Underrated is her role as Delia Deetz in the 1988 classic Beetle Juice. When you talk about a character that gets a bad wrap this one has to be up there. She was trying to give her family a better life. Without her persistence Winona Ryder’s character, Lydia Deetz, would have continued to be a self-loathing gothic mope. We all could have done without Otho, but again, Delia was just doing what she thought was best for her family. Ultimately, because of her, it all worked out and for that she is slightly misunderstood. 

Where there are babies, there’s usually a mama. This one can be kind of annoying because, she didn’t really do anything wrong. Well, besides take over the human colony. They should have known enough to leave the aliens alone. Leave it up to a bunch of humans in space to start poking a bee’s nest. Luckily, Ripley survived to provide us with one more film.

You know it wouldn’t be a list of mothers without at least one man dressed in drag.

Helen Buckman, played by Dianne Wiest, is a middle-aged single mother whose ex-husband is not at all involved with her children. Her brother and sister, Gil (Steve Martin) & Susan’s (Harley Kozak) families seem perfect from the outside looking in. All are far from it. Diane’s family is seemingly falling apart. Her daughter, Martha Plimpton is dating Keanu Reeves (back when he was a great actor) and her son, Joaquin Phoenix (before he was a great actor), is toting around a mysterious brown bag. These are all things that would drive any mother insane. Luckily for us this brown bag wasn’t filled with the same stuff that was in that brief case in Pulp Fiction… or was it?

Debatably, Princess Amidala is part of a backstory that none of us should have ever seen. Did you know that Natalie Portman was only 16 when she was first cast as the Queen of Naboo? Sometimes geeks can be gross. I’m not going to lie about it… the constant changing of outfits just confused me. She has an elaborate headdress for every scene. I just didn’t get that part.

We never get to see her being a mother. Actually, she never got the chance. She was more like a birthing vessel for Luke and Leia Skywalker. Let me repeat… She grew the Jedi son of Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, inside of her. Can you even wrap your mind around that? From her prequel-ized womb she spawned a whole generation of entertainment that has yet to be matched. In a way, she is the Fairy Godmother of Geeks.