Yesterday I took my seven year old son Joseph to see the new movie Over The Hedge which received a 73% positive rating at RottenTomatoes.com.  We both loved the movie and laughed a lot.

As I watched, I thought about the messages built into the movie's story:

• Family (community) is vitally important
• You are strongest when you are in your community
• Living life as a loner is no fun
• Working as a unified team, we can over come the most threatening challenges

THIS is a movie made to appeal to the Millennial Generation!

The Millennials (born 1982 - 2005) are the generation following the X-Generation.  If the cycles of history continue as predicted by Howe & Strauss in their book The Fourth Turning, Millennials are on tap to become our next "hero" generation.  As a point of reference, our last hero generation is known as the "G.I. Generation" because they fought in WWII. 

All hero generations are predisposed to work in teams and it's a good thing to because it's the Millennials who will be facing the next "crisis" (our last one was WWII). 

Back to the movie... Millennials are the most diverse generation ever - and the movie depicted a diverse "family" (see the photo.  Millennials like messages about the importance of team and community and the movie's strongest theme was FAMILY and COMMUNITY IS EVERYTHING.  Millennials will be asked and expected to give their all during the next crisis and in the movie the animal family had to pull together like never before to stay alive and beat several fierce and determined enemies.

A similar message was delivered last summer to our children (and adults) in the wildly popular kids movie entitled "The Incredibles".  Expect to see more movies (esp. kids movies) with the same messages.