Bechdel Test Movie List

Female lead appears after the death of the main character's mother. A minor "wife of" character only has one or two lines, not directed at another woman.

I disagree because even though there are more than two women, only one of them has a name.

The movie does not meet any of the Bechdel tests.

I thought the movie was going to make a point about women being smart with Sam. She was a beautiful ambitious weather girl, but she had a habit of saying smart things but quelling them last minute to sound more ditzy. Flint calls her out on it, but it goes to a dark place. Sam says that she was always picked on for being nerdy, so she decided to be beautiful. Flint encourages her to be 'herself' and put her hair back and wear massive eyeglasses, essentially dorking her up. Just No. The story tried to make a feminist point, but like second wave feminist tells us, women can be beautiful AND smart. CWACOM made a point of making them mutually exclusive. It would have been okay if Sam made this choice mid-movie herself but unfortunately, Flint made this decision for her. tsk-tsk-tsk.

On a side note, this movie was decidedly sexist. Not only did the movie not pass the Bechdal Test, but Sam never got to be her own person. The only change she underwent was due to men. The only thing she contributed to the movie was as a love interest, and as the one that foresees the weather crisis. This last part would have been okay, but it fell into her lap. The suitcase containing the the weather device appeared magically out of nowhere. She could have been a driving force of the movie, but they made her as passive as they could. Even when she was affecting the movie's outcome slightly by lowering Flint into the Abyss, she had a massive allergic reaction to a peanut. Flint decides to chew the rope apart so Sam wouldn't have to make the decision about allowing him to drop. This prompted one of the male characters to literally pick her up and carry her to safety. This shows that women, even when they are trying their best, are misguidedly heroic and, at the end of the day, completely ineffective.

You're wrong M A Zimmerman : p
The point is that glasses and hair pulled back is her being herself ( how flint perceives her to be most beautiful), not conforming to the societal ideal of beauty. That she is beautiful with her hair back and her glasses on.
In fact they make their point perfectly.
Unfortunately you have fallen into the trap of assuming beauty is Sam with no glasses and her hair down (demonstrated by your use of 'dorked up'). Shame. lol

You're wrong M A Zimmerman : p
The point is that glasses and hair pulled back is her being herself ( how flint perceives her to be most beautiful), not conforming to the societal ideal of beauty. That she is beautiful with her hair back and her glasses on.
In fact they make their point perfectly.
Unfortunately you have fallen into the trap of assuming beauty is Sam with no glasses and her hair down (demonstrated by your use of 'dorked up'). Shame. lol

Flynn's mother, Earl's wife or any speaking woman isn't named. The only relevant female in the film is Sam. It doesn't pass any of the tests.

Does not pass any test. The mom is not a character, she's a nameless phantom that only served as a plot device.

In response to Tom, the movie makes it clear either way that her beauty is the product of how she dresses/wears her hair, regardless of whether it's conforming to society's expectations or not. It's a reversal of the "dorky girl takes off the glasses and is beautiful" trope, but it's still equally inane and sexist. And it frankly makes her a coward. I also do not understand the 4-eye jokes, I was 17 when this movie came out, and that glasses schoolyard teasing was gone long before I was a kid, if it ever actually existed. This movie had the opportunity to hit on something real--like how men sometimes don't hear intellectual comments if they are said by a woman, or how sometimes men can feel emasculated by intellectual women (or how even women can feel overly masculine when being intellectual and feel insecure or bad about it). But it avoided saying anything real and instead put into young girls minds that dressing conventionally (given you have a conventionally attractive face and body) will ward off bullying until some man comes along and appreciates your nerdy-ness and decides you should revert to your original 8-year old style? Yuck. Overall her character is not the independent thinker the film maybe thought she was, as she lacks agency entirely and is only the recipient of actions.

Also... why did they have to kill off the mom? They couldn't handle two women with speaking roles in the movie? Sam is clearly a mommy-replacement. Why couldn't the conniving mayor or inventor be female? They didn't have to be, but the movie shouldn't have rolled around in a stinky pile of pseudo-feminism and then patted itself on the back for how good it smelled. It's cringe-inducing to watch. I've never written on this website before, but of all the children's movies I've watched in my life--let alone a relatively modern one!--this is one of the worst. This and Frozen, of course.

Doesn't pass any of the tests. Sam is the only woman in this movie with a name.