Bargatze's 'Breadwinner' Can't Beat 'Mr. Mom'
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- "The Breadwinner" stars comedian Nate Bargatze (who also co-wrote) and is directed by Eric Appel; it follows a Nashville Toyota salesman whose wife, played by Mandy Moore, lands a "Shark Tank" deal and heads to South Korea to oversee manufacturing
- Lori Greiner appears as herself, agreeing to back Moore's children's accessory on the condition Bargatze's character take over all household duties
- Colin Jost plays the town's other stay-at-home dad and Kumail Nanjiani a rival Toyota salesman, though the review calls both roles "thinly sketched" filler
- The three daughters — played by Stella Grace Fitzgerald, Birdie Borria, and Charlotte Ann Tucker — are praised for maintaining "a feminine alliance that gives the story its heart," with Fitzgerald getting the line "Guess we're on our own now: three orphans."
- The review compares the film unfavorably to the 1983 "Mr. Mom," noting that the older film's trailer contains "a better burnt-toast gag than the one in 'The Breadwinner'"
- A surreal montage in which Nate scrubs oatmeal with a drill and drowns in laundry is singled out as the film's highlight, compared to the "far cleverer" comedy "I Love Boosters" by Boots Riley
- The review closes by calling the movie's message — that Nate's month at home was the best of his life — a "tacked-on ending" undermined by a "regressive premise," concluding that "the real joke is that this movie was made in 2026."
Why it matters: A pan from Variety carries weight for Bargatze's transition from stand-up specials into leading-man features; the review argues the film undercuts its own pro-domestic-labor message with 'bumbling dad' pratfalls that feel borrowed from 1983, undercutting the Bargatze-led househusband comedy as both a commercial and cultural proposition.
