‘The Breadwinner’ Review: Nate Bargatze’s Boring Big-Screen Vehicle

Relatable. It’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of Nate Bargatze. The unassuming, mild-mannered comedian has become one of the most popular live acts in the country, regularly selling out arenas. His humor is clean and mostly revolves around his family life. He’s inoffensive and likeable. And like so many comedians before him, he’s now adapted his persona to the screen, although not for the television sitcom you might expect — but rather the big screen. And like Bargatze, The Breadwinner is relatable, inoffensive and also thoroughly bland.

Do you remember the scene in Kramer vs. Kramer when Dustin Hoffman, recently abandoned by his wife, tries to make breakfast for his young son and it turns out to be a disaster? Imagine that scene stretched out for 90 minutes or so and you have a sense of this film scripted by Bargatze and Dan Lagana. Except in this case, the father, Nate (you didn’t think the comedian would stretch himself by playing a character with a different name, did you?), only has to man the fort for two weeks while his loving wife Katie (Mandy Moore, probably desperately hoping for a This Is Us reunion) travels to South Korea to oversee production of a new product she’s invented.

Having to temporarily abandon the car salesman job he loves and is so good at that he’s regularly given the title “Salesman of the Year” at the Toyota dealership where he works (this may be the only movie in history that makes the profession seem almost noble), Nate is forced to care for his three young daughters (Stella Grace Fitzgerald, Birdie Borria, Charlotte Ann Tucker), all of whom are well-adjusted and adorable.

Seems like a relatively simple task, but not for Nate, who doesn’t know when a toaster is unplugged and can’t open a kitchen cabinet without a load of dry spaghetti landing on his head. As for laundry, forget it — he simply sprays his kids’ clothes with their mother’s perfume. When he goes to the grocery store, he’s befuddled by the wide variety of eggs on display, and has no idea what lactose-free milk is.

This is all supposed to be riotously amusing, and perhaps could have been if we hadn’t seen it handled in so much funnier fashion in nearly every family sitcom ever created and such movies as Mr. Mom. But even forgetting its predecessors, The Breadwinner is so lazy and laid-back that it practically recedes into itself. This is a film that makes television shows like Father Knows Best and My Three Sons seem edgy. Bargatze’s resolutely deadpan comic persona works well for his stand-up act, but onscreen he seems mostly on the verge of a coma, his eyes occasionally blinking to signal distress.

What’s worse is that the film wastes talented performers in one-note, one-joke roles, including Kumail Nanjiani as Nate’s preening, jealous colleague; Colin Jost as a fellow stay-at-home dad who becomes both resentful and needy; Will Forte as a clueless, incompetent roofer who practically becomes a member of the family; and the brilliant Kate Berlant, who is given absolutely nothing to do.

A segment involving Katie going on Shark Tank to pitch her product features cameos from all the hosts, including the now ubiquitous (for some unknown reason) Kevin O’Leary and Lori Greiner. It plays like an unfunny version of one of those I Love Lucy episodes in which Lucy meets a Hollywood star.

Featuring odes to such heartland institutions as the Tennessee Titans and Walmart, the latter depicted as a holy mecca where any problem can be solved, The Breadwinner aspires to John Hughes family-style humor without any of the genuine hilarity that filmmaker produced. Its principal comic set piece involves a horse rising from the seeming dead and proceeding to rampage through a house, which is as unfunny as it sounds. And in a recurring gag, Nate blows an air horn to get people’s attention. It may be the only thing that will keep audience members awake.