Breadwinner

A mother creates a product leading to a life-changing opportunity. Welcome to Breadwinner, an American comedy directed by Eric Appel; written by Nate Bargatze and Dan Lagan.

Warning: this review has spoilers. Turn back now if you do not want them.

Synopsis

Katie Wilcox (Mandy Moore), a dedicated wife and mother of three girls, creates a product to help both adults and children stay organized. The product become popular amongst her parent groups leading to her to pitch it on Shark Tank. One of the Shark’s give her an offer, requiring her to leave home. Nate Wilcox (Nate Bargatze) must now take time off work as the number one car salesman to care for the domestic duties of parenthood during his wife’s absence. Never having to actually parent, or houseclean, the work leaves Nate drowning in multiple mishaps.

Worked

First and foremost, I am not familiar with Nate Bargatze’s humor. Most of the jokes in the film fall in either dry or slapstick humor. The chemistry for the married couple worked for me. Moore’s character clearly overworked, but super organized on all domestic “motherly” duties came through. Nate’s portrayed the “bumbling” father through comedic lens struck like a huge mockery on the societal norms of parenting. I felt his performance of male “super” ego worked. The film progresses with outlandish scenario, piling on to Nate’s incompetence of dealing with household duties (for example, the roof repair, Nate’s father coming to be unhelpful, etc). My favorite scene would have to be when Nate confronts three mothers at the school and he goes off on them in true “Nate Bargatze Comedy.” He earns their respect while creating another nemesis in a stay-at-home dad. The film closes with a predictable ending as well.

Flat

First the plot. Having a sole earner for a family already stretches beyond modern America. There are very few families who are able to maintain a stay-at-home parent. However, since it’s a comedy I was able to overlook it. Being not familiar with Nate Bargatze’s humor didn’t help either. Though I enjoyed his stint with the parents and a clip of his routine after the film, I felt the film failed to showcase Nate’s humor. Adding in the roof repairman felt more like a distraction to the plot. I also didn’t enjoy having his “father” attempt to come to the rescue. Simply adding a character in hopes to generate laughs didn’t work for me. The film may have done better if it centered more around Nate’s humor than trying to be slapstick-ish.

Deep Dive

Though I didn’t really enjoy adding the father and the repairman into the overall plot, I feel like the film pointed a strong, critical finger at the male ego. Throughout the film, we see how the female characters (including the daughters) tend to be more intelligent than their male counterparts. The men remain blinded by their egos. For example, Nate focuses on his claim about how “easy” it is to perform domestic duties of child-rendering and cleaning; the repairman’s “I can fix that” attitude, when clearly he doesn’t know what he’s doing; and the father’s lethargic attitude towards assisting his son. Adding on to this fragile ego, we watch two men fight over recognition as “Top-Seller.” Nate even tries to run his house like it’s a business. Meanwhile, two women continue to collaborate for the success of a product. Perhaps, that’s the message Nate wants the audience to see. Men need to learn to lower their ego and think collaboratively instead of maintaining a competitive stance?

Overall Rating

My overall rating of the film would be 3/5 star. I appreciate the message (at least my interpretive message) from the film, but a lot of the humor didn’t really work for me. It felt like it was trying to be a modern day Mr. Mom meets Daddy Daycare. What are you thoughts of the film? Share your comments below.