The Breadwinner info:
Director: Eric Appel
Writer: Nate Bargatze and Dan Lagana
Starring: Nate Bargatze, Mandy Moore, Colin Jost, and Will Forte
Intro
Hello and welcome to another week here at 1guysmindlessmoviereviews.com. I’m back after a week away. I’ve been spending some time working on what’s to come next for both me and the movie review site, and I hope to have an update for you next week. In the meantime, I hope everyone is enjoying summer break and extra time with the kids at home (if you have any)…or, in our case, the kids with extra kids at the house for days on end.
Once a year, we make it out to our local-ish drive-in movie theater for a night with two movies, plenty of snacks, and a few blankets to shield off the night air. I will talk about the other movie next week, but this week’s pick is “The Breadwinner”. Which happened to be the second movie we watched. But it’s older, so I will discuss it first. However, if you haven’t seen this yet and don’t want to be spoiled, then I would go back to my reviews page to see what else I have in store for you. Come back here later and finish this one.
The Breadwinner recap
“The Breadwinner” is just an average story about a mom who takes care of the kids most of the time and a dad who is really good at his job. In this case, the mom (Kate Wilcox) is played by Moore and the dad (Nate Wilcox) by Bargatze. In this story, however, Kate invents something that helps to make their busy life easier to control. So, she goes on the show Shark Tank and ends up getting a deal to produce and sell more of them.
The moment she leaves, Nate and his three daughters are thrown into chaos as he struggles to maintain all the chores and errands that his wife normally does. He even hires Keegan (Will Forte) to fix their roof, even though she picked him just to throw in a smaller estimate to the other roofers. Thinking he will need some help, he calls his mom to see if she wants to come stay with them for a week, but instead, his lazy dad comes over instead to add to the mess and clutter.
Things weren’t terrible after the first two weeks, but as soon as she gets home, she is called right back to leave again for another two weeks. This is when “The Breadwinner” turns around. Nate decides to go back to work, have the kids start doing more around the house, and start to run their home like he does his sales floor. Things are running smoothly for a bit, and then it literally all comes crashing down as the home is destroyed by both Keegan and the horse he bought for his youngest daughter.
In the end, they work together to try to salvage a live feed for Katie’s new product launch. Nate leaves his sales job and joins his wife to help sell her product. Since this is a comedy, it has a happy ending for everyone involved. Yes… Even Keegan.
My thoughts on The Breadwinner
Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a Nate Bargatze stand-up comedy special. Now for those of you who haven’t, but you’ve seen “The Breadwinner”, you’re in luck. This is basically a stand-up special, but in story form. The jokes are there, the setups are there, but instead of being on stage, he’s a family man.
Now, don’t get the impression that it’s all bad. This is a decent movie; it’s just not great. I laughed at quite a bit of the jokes, but the story was all pretty much either told in the trailer or too easy to figure out as it progressed. Bargatze does a decent job, but he is pretty much playing himself, so how bad could he be? In fact, his character’s name is even Nate. What really saved this movie was the surrounding cast. It was loaded with funny talent outside of the Wilcox family. Forte, along with Zach Cherry, Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Herlihy, and Colin Jost, all brought unique characters to their respective roles.
Since this is Bargatze’s first major movie and leading role, I will cut him a little slack. I’m sure we will see him start popping up in more movies now. Director Eric Appel is no stranger to comedies either, so I’m sure that helped. Overall, it was funny, but forgettable. Not bad, but probably not worth going out of my way to watch again. In the end, I will leave this with a 5 out of 10.
Watch or wait?
Unless you are a big fan of Nate Bargatze, this one has to be a big wait. I enjoy a good comedy, but some people may not appreciate this enough on the big screen. I watched it as the second half of a double-header at a drive-in, and I was the only one in my group to stay awake for this whole thing. You should wait to watch this at home.
Ok, that’s it for me this week. That means it’s your turn now. Have you seen “The Breadwinner” yet? If so, what are your thoughts? Are you in the same boat as me and think it’s like a comedy special in movie form or do you have a higher opinion of it? Let me know in the comments and I will be back next week with another mindless movie review of some sort.
