{"id":826068,"date":"2026-05-27T18:26:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/826068\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T18:26:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T18:26:06","slug":"the-breadwinner-review-nate-bargatzes-comedy-is-old-fashioned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/826068\/","title":{"rendered":"The Breadwinner Review: Nate Bargatze’s Comedy Is Old Fashioned"},"content":{"rendered":"

If there\u2019s one thing we need in 2026, it\u2019s a new comedy about how men are bad at housework. Wait, did I say 2026? Sorry, that was a typo. I meant \u201cnever.\u201d Watching a man in an apron destroy the family kitchen was old when \u201cMr. Mom\u201d did it in 1983. It was old when \u201cI Love Lucy\u201d did it in 1952. I don\u2019t think the Lumi\u00e8re Brothers made a comedy like this in the late 1890s, but if somebody pitched it, I think they\u2019d have rolled their eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Breadwinner<\/a>\u201d stars stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze as Nate Wilcox, a car salesman who lets his wife, Katie (Mandy Moore), do all the mom stuff. And apparently all the dad stuff. She parents their three daughters, cleans the house, cooks the food, hires independent contractors, and all Nate has to do is take out the garbage. Get this, folks: Nate can\u2019t even take out the garbage without messing it up. Men, am I right?<\/p>\n

To his credit, Nate isn\u2019t a sexist pig. He doesn\u2019t think women belong in the kitchen and when Katie invents a clever scheduling doodad and pitches it on \u201cShark Tank,\u201d he supports her completely. When the Sharks humiliate Nate on live television, and say they\u2019ll only invest in Katie\u2019s dream if he becomes a stay-at-home dad \u2014 which is a distractingly strange plot point \u2014 he doesn\u2019t fight it. Nate is willing to take care of his family. But only for two weeks. Then they\u2019ll go back to the status quo. Let\u2019s not go nuts or anything.<\/p>\n

Alas, Nate has the audacity, on his first morning of momming, to make scrambled eggs for breakfast. This doofus didn\u2019t know his daughters recently and randomly decided they don\u2019t eat scrambled eggs. Haha! Oh no, now the toaster is broken! Wait, it was just unplugged. Nate, you silly goose!<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Breadwinner\u201d has more stale corny bits than a Kellogg\u2019s factory dumpster. Sure, it\u2019s made for families but that\u2019s a terrible excuse. Families deserve better movies than this. Every movie doesn\u2019t have to be a classic, but I\u2019m pretty sure every comedy should at least try to be funny, and \u201cThe Breadwinner\u201d isn\u2019t trying very hard. It leans on every boring clich\u00e9 in the book. And it\u2019s not a well-written book.<\/p>\n

Eric Appel, who also directed the ingenious comedy biopic \u201cWeird: The Al Yankovic Story,\u201d can\u2019t seem to figure out what the appeal of this movie is. It\u2019s not schadenfreude, because Nate\u2019s not a big enough jerk to deserve his suffering, and the suffering is fairly minimal anyway. It\u2019s not a film about breaking all of Mom\u2019s stuffy house rules, because the kids like their mom\u2019s rules, and they don\u2019t take full advantage of Dad\u2019s ineptitude. So there\u2019s no karmic justice, there\u2019s no wish fulfillment, there\u2019s just the halfhearted revelation that housework is hard. As if anyone who would willingly go to a movie about housework doesn\u2019t know that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Breadwinner\u201d is a relatively harmless movie, but \u201crelatively harmless\u201d isn\u2019t the kind of compliment you put on a poster (although that kind of honesty would be a pleasant change of pace). It does raise the question, however, of why a film this retro gets a major summer release in the mid-2020s. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s an audience, since there\u2019s an audience for everything, even if it\u2019s a small one, but \u201cThe Breadwinner\u201d sure seems like a canary in the cultural coal mine. <\/p>\n

If we\u2019ve regressed so far in gender politics that the idea of a woman going to work and a man doing chores feels fresh again, that\u2019s a disquieting thought. And \u201cDisquieting thoughts!\u201d is definitely not the kind of thing you put on a movie poster, unless it\u2019s an arthouse horror movie. \u201cThe Breadwinner\u201d isn\u2019t great art, and it\u2019s only a horror movie in an abstract sense, but hey\u2026 at least it\u2019s got a house. That\u2019s something. Not much, but something.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Brendan\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If there\u2019s one thing we need in 2026, it\u2019s a new comedy about how men are bad at…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":826069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[28],"tags":[171,339235,86970,53,42702,118294,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-826068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-eric-appel","tag-mandy-moore","tag-movies","tag-nate-bargatze","tag-the-breadwinner","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116647952587590632","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/826069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}