14 Sweet Movie Mom Moments That Make Us Cry Happy Tears
The only thing that make us ugly-cry more than a Nicholas Sparks movie? Films that feature a mom giving up something for her child or making the ultimate sacrifice. Whether it's Bambi's mother or Sandra Bullock's tough, Southern mom in The Blind Side, the characters in these movies pull at our heartstrings in a way that requires a glass of wine and a box of tissues.
Click through for 14 movies that will drain your tear ducts. Which of these mom-centric movies is your favorite?
Image via Warner Bros. Entertainment
'The Blind Side' (2009)
Sandra Bullock won a well-deserved Best Acress Oscar in 2010 for her role in The Blind Side, playing a mother named Leigh Anne who takes in a homeless teenager and helps him turn his life around. When Leigh Anne tears up when Michael tells her that he's never had his own bed before, it mirrors our own feelings exactly!
'Stepmom' (1998)
A mother dying of cancer is an obvious tearjerker plotline, but it's not the ending of Stepmom that gives us the feels -- its the scene where Jackie (played by Susan Sarandon) dances around the house with her two children to the song "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" after telling them her about her diagnosis that gets us every time.
'Terms of Endearment' (1983)
Cue the waterworks. When Debra Winger's character, Emma, who is terminally ill with cancer, says goodbye to her two young sons in the hospital in Terms of Endearment, it makes us feel like we are saying goodbye to our own moms.
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'Dumbo' (1941)
In Dumbo, the title character's mother is only defending her young son, a baby elephant named Dumbo, from a group of tormentors when she is deemed crazy and locked up by her circus handlers. Young Dumbo comes to say goodbye to her, and she rocks him with her trunk in the movie's most touching scene.
'Sophie's Choice' (1982)
Could you ever choose between two of your children in a life or death situation? It's the scenario Meryl Streep's character, Sophie, faces in Sophie's Choice when a Nazi guard at Auschwitz makes her pick a child to be sent to the gas chamber in this Oscar-winning 1982 drama.
'Bambi' (1942)
Is there a scene in cinematic history more tear-enducing than Bambi's mother dying? Perhaps it's because we first watched Bambi as a child, but the sound of the hunter's gun and young Bambi calling out for his mom in the snow makes us tear up even now as adults.
'Forrest Gump' (1994)
"What's the matter, momma?" Forrest asks his mother, played by Sally Field, in a poignant scene in Forrest Gump. Mrs. Gump, dying of cancer, explains to her son, played brilliantly by Tom Hanks, that "life is like a box of chocolates" and that she had fulfilled her destiny in being his mom.
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'The Family Stone' (2005)
A holiday comedy, The Family Stone features Diane Keaton as Sybil, the matriarch of the Stone family whose health is failing her. Unbeknownst to her son's girlfriend, who presents her with an enlarged family photo as a Christmas gift, Sybil is dying of breast cancer, making the scene extra poignant.
'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' (2011)
In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Oskar (embodied by child actor Thomas Horn) is a young boy in New York City who loses his father in the 9/11 World Trade Center attack. During a particularly moving scene, he tells his mother in anger that he wishes she was the one who had died that day, and not his father, and, in a sad moment, the mother (played by Sandra Bullock) replies "me too."
'Mamma Mia!' (2008)
In the 2008 musical Mamma Mia!, bride-to-be Sophie (played by Amanda Seyfried) finds her mother's diary and invites three men, one of whom is the father she's never met, to her wedding so her real dad can walk her down the aisle. In one scene, Sophie gets into a fight with her mother (played by Meryl Streep) right before her wedding, but mom Donna makes attempts to make amends and sings a sad ballad, "Slipping Through My Fingers."
'The Land Before Time' (1988)
When Littlefoot's mother is killed by a T. rex in The Land Before Time, after rescuing her son from danger, the momma dinosaur tells her son, "I'll be with you ... even when you can't see me" in the film's most heart-wrenching scene.
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'Still Alice' (2014)
Near the end of Still Alice, a movie about a mother who is suffering from Alzheimer's, Kristen Stewart's character Lydia reads to her mother Alice (played by Julianne Moore) from the play Angels in America. Barely able to speak, Alice replies "love" when asked what the play is about, in a powerful scene between the two characters.
'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood' (2002)
At one point in a sad flashback scene in Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Ashley Judd's character Vivi goes to confession and tells the priest that motherhood is crushing her soul. Years later, the movie depicts how Vivi's unhappiness impacted her relationship with her grown daughter, played by Sandra Bullock.