‘The Breadwinner’ Review: Nate Bargatze, Man of the House

Back in the 1980s, the comedian Roseanne Barr referred to herself as a “domestic goddess.” These days, Nate Bargatze is making a big impression with his own tales of domestic ineptitude.

Written by Bargatze with Dan Lagana and directed by Eric Appel (of “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”), “The Breadwinner” will be familiar to anyone who’s heard of the 1983 film “Mr. Mom,” but the accents are very 21st century. Bargatze plays Nate Wilcox, a car salesman with three children whose wife, Katie (a winning Mandy Moore), invents a home-schedule-managing gadget that lands her a spot on the entrepreneurial TV competition “Shark Tank.” When one of the show’s “sharks” offers a $100,000 buy-in, Katie exults, and Nate is summoned from the green room while still chewing on a doughnut.

This gag sets off most of the other humor in the picture. Since Katie has to fly to South Korea to supervise manufacturing on her gadget, Nate is obliged to run the house while she’s away. There is not one chore that doesn’t defeat him; from breakfast to laundry to school drop-off and pickup, he’s a mess.

Bargatze proves himself a savvy writer and performer here; he doesn’t hog all the laugh lines for himself, but instead often plays straight man to his three daughters, the teenage Gracie (Stella Grace Fitzgerald), the spelling-bee maven Hadley (Birdie Borria), and the adorable moppet Sam (Charlotte Ann Tucker), who likes hugging her classmates a bit too much. Colin Jost and Will Forte provide absurdist neighborly “support,” but it’s the girls who ultimately make this comedy sing.

The Breadwinner
Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters.