Though he ranks among the highest-grossing stand-ups in the world, Nate Bargatze positions himself as an everyman, a frazzled father as confused by egg cartons as he is by scrambled eggs. It’s an act Bargatze has honed for more than two decades on stage and which he brings to The Breadwinner, the gently regressive studio comedy he’s chosen for his first starring vehicle. Bargatze bakes his obscenity-free, “apolitical” material in a Mr. Mom mold, throwing on the apron and proving that so-called “women’s work” isn’t as easy as it might seem. The same goes for mainstream studio comedies.
Both the good and bad of Bargatze are present in The Breadwinner, which, like the comic, aims squarely at the center, neither aspiring to connect to his audience through deep insight nor disgust them with the horrors of reality. He stars as Nate Wilcox, a girl dad of three, whose wife, Katie (Mandy Moore), hits it big on Shark Tank and is whisked away to South Korea by Lori Greiner to make plastic, star-shaped organizers for kids. With Katie pursuing her dream of creating kitchen-drawer clutter, she leaves Nate in charge of their three daughters—13-year-old Gracie (Stella Grace Fitzgerald), tween-age Hadley (Birdie Borria), and first-grader Sam (Charlotte Anne Tucker)—for two weeks of solo parenting that he’s thus far avoided.
Can a father with over a decade of experience finally learn to be a dad? It’s a premise squarely in the “they don’t make movies like this anymore” genre for good reason. Society, some hoped, had moved on from the sexual politics of breadwinning and the idea that men could sleepwalk their way through fatherhood. They’d not only have to be around but present in the modern paradigm, but the Wilcoxes operate in more traditional ways. According to Nate, the Wilcox work-life balance means that he takes care of the “work” at his beloved Toyota dealership, where he’s the top salesman, and Katie manages “the life” of house and home. With her several time zones away, the house will become “Nate Land” until morale improves.
