Escape From America, I Mean, Escape From Planet Earth

Another children's film planting liberal messages in the minds of your children.  Because there just aren't enough liberal messages bombarding our kids as they grow up.  I give this maybe an 8.3 on the Lib-o-meter (or Progresso-meter for those identifying with the Woodrow Wilson fascists since the hippies have gotten a bad rap).

Over all, it's cute.  Funny in a few places, nice sentiments, but over all, a little on the mediocre side.  Not as forgettable as Space Chimps or as boring as Mars Needs Moms.   But as at least one other reviewer has noted: "there are a lot of liberal political undertones that parents should note."

We got the tired mean army guy stereotype (as seen in the sci-fi film Avatar) amalgamated with the other tired kill-the-aliens-before-they-get-you stereotype.  The most original play on the former stereotype has been in Monsters vs. Aliens, which was surprisingly good. For the latter stereotype see James Woods in Contact.  It seems to be written to play into the tired anti-Bush narrative of the evil conservative that wants to decimate other nations on the off-chance that they might pose a danger to us.  (Slightly better than the evil conservative that does it to build an oil pipeline.)  The "conservative" folly of The Day The Earth Stood Still.

Yes, this is about the uselessness of fear and warmongering.  While the recent Avengers movie plays favorably against most Hollywood movies on the Lib-o-meter, there is a cynical skepticism about the need to develop advanced weaponry after Earth is invaded by a powerful immortal villain, soon to be followed by an army of powerful villains.  Yes, to a Progressive that believes that citizens needs to be unarmed and dismantling your weapons is the key to stopping the aggression of totalitarian political movements, this makes a whole lotta sense.  (Though it sure wasn't the key to the Berlin Wall coming down.)  Enter the current administration that believes in having no more weapons of mass destructing than the next nation, does believe in arming genocidal radicals so they can have the anti-American theocracy they've been dreaming of, and believes that only police and government agents should be armed.  Oh, it's a liberal fascist dream.

The point is, your children need to be taught that a person who wants weapons to be safe or thinks that he or she is under any threat is paranoid and dangerous and wants desperately to kill and destroy.  Or so the moviemakers think.  They were probably as disappointed as Chris Matthews that the Boston bombers weren't Tea Partiers from some anti-government militia group.

And what is the biggest threat to our planet?  The best alien minds of the galaxy answer that for your kids: It's Global Warming, kids!  In the 80s, the answer probably would have been nuclear holocaust, as played up in the movie Dreamscape.  That liberal trope is old news, since the success of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy.  Global Warming is now the narrative of choice for the progressive trend toward the One World Government.

This even makes its way into this movie, which blames our wars on our silly division into nations.   Yep, borders lead to wars, just like property lines and fences lead to breaking-and-entering.  I mean, all China needed to end the wars between its states was a ruthless Emperor to force them to be one country, which was the message of the Jet Li flick Hero.

The liberals that made this movie were not content with these as the only progressive messages in the film.  The movie is deliberately vague on the gender of the Grey Aliens, but the Greys turn out to all have male voices, and in the final scene of the movie, it is revealed that the three Grey Aliens are a married unit. Not a married couple, if you catch my meaning.  It happens so fast, most reviewers didn't even notice it.  As they share kleenexes while witnessing the exchange of wedding vows, one alien says to the other two, "Let's never break up, guys."  Same sex polygamy, folks.  Boy, when liberals set out to do a children's movie, they go all out.  Personally, I think there's something very cynical about it.

So, while Fun Size beats this at a 9.6 on the Lib-o-meter, and so does Para-Norman with an 8.7, the libs would love to introduce your kids to their more inclusive, less fearful universe with Escape From Planet Earth.  While reminding the young audience that it is the U.S. that is particularly stupid about alien invaders (unlike the more general story of the sci-fi District 9), they decided not to call it "Escape From America," something liberal radicals are often promising to do, but rarely follow through on.