Get your insulin shot before you watch this super-saccharine (but occasionally enjoyable) movie.
The Breadwinner
1 star (out of 4)
Starring Nate Bargatze, Mandy Moore, Colin Jost, Zach Cherry, Martin Herlihy, Kumail Nanjiani, and Will Forte
Language: English
Running time: 95 minutes
Available: In theaters, May 29, 2026
I’m a father, and proud of it. When anything goes wrong, I instantly go into Dad mode: “Don’t worry! I got this. Everything’s gonna be fine. Let me just check it out, and we’ll be A-OK.”
Except sometimes it’s not gonna be fine, not gonna be A-OK.
Enter comedian Nate Bargatze, in full Dad mode. Color me clueless, but I had never heard of him before watching his first feature film, Breadwinner. That’s on me. According to Bargatze’s website, he is “a special kind of guy,” “clean and relatable,” and “the nicest man in stand-up.” The sort of man your grandma would like. Your Aunt Mary: “I don’t understand why you didn’t marry a man like Nate Bargatze. He’s so nice!”
And that was my final thought as I left the Showcase Cinema de Lux recently after watching The Breadwinner: “That was so…nice. What a nice movie.”
Think The King of Queens, but without the intellectual depth. Or maybe Ozzie and Harriet meets Joy, the Jennifer Lawrence biopic about the housewife who invents the Miracle Mop, but with less angst. Mr. Mom redux. A late-night repeat of According to Jim. Possibly an unaired episode of William Bendix’s The Life of Riley from 1953. The inept Dad left in charge of the household? This is old soup, and I think it’s gone bad.
The only tension in The Breadwinner is whether the wife will be mad at her husband for leaving the house a mess while she was off starting her business venture. The stakes, shall we say, are never higher than your ankles.
The Breadwinner isn’t a challenging film. It was planned to fulfill all your fantasies of American life: Dad is the moneymaker, and Mom is the household anchor, the real force keeping the family upright and shipshape. Lovable, kooky characters waltz into the domestic bliss unexpectedly, and the kids, wiser than their years, see through it all. The movie was also, it seemed to me, a plug for Bargatze’s 38-city “world tour,” conveniently scheduled to begin the day after the release of The Breadwinner. Timing, I guess, is everything.
Bargatze plays Nate Wilcox (the name alone lets you know that this is not a stretch), a successful Toyota salesman. Toyota, it must be said, deserves an assistant producer credit here, considering the prominent product placement. Nate brings home the bacon! He keeps his family fed! He’s the top dog on the sales floor! He pays the bills! He’s the breadwinner! Trouble is, he doesn’t have a clue how a family operates.
That responsibility is on the shoulders of the delightful Mandy Moore, playing the compliant wifey-poo, who somehow gets an investment on Shark Tank for a home-made to-do list in the shape of a star. Huh? Because that’s Shark Tank. While Mom is jetting off to a factory in South Korea to start up her new business, Nate is left in charge of their three daughters and the household maintenance. You could probably write the script from here.
What could go wrong? Basically, everything. The roof falling down over their ears, schedules falling apart, teenage daughter falling in love with a bad boy, and Nate’s prevaricating international phone chats with Mom: “Hey, no, everything here is fine. No need to worry.”
The plot is formulaic. Dad barely holds it together, everything goes to hell in Act II, and by the end of the film, the wife looks at hubby and says, “It’s all good. Everything’s going to be perfect. I’m just glad you were here.”
Well, as a Dad, I can tell you that the last bit is bogus. You messed up, look at the disaster you left, this is going into your permanent record. That’s real life.
And yet…and yet…
The Breadwinner is such a sweet, funny, kind, warm-hearted movie that you could take your 10-year-old and your grandma to watch it. Not a lot of film fare out there today that fits that bill. It’s what we used to call “fun for the entire family,” a genre that I thought ended around 1991. So kudos for that if nothing more.
And there is nothing more.
Bargatze, as a stand-up comedian, has hosted Saturday Night Live twice, so I’m guessing that’s how he was able to lure in some of his old SNL castmates in secondary roles. Colin Jost, the “Weekend Update” co-anchor, plays the friendless, clingy Conor, Martin Herlihy (of SNL’s Please Don’t Destroy troupe) is the food deliveryman Peter, and Will Forte doesn’t test his acting abilities as dumb-as-a-rock handyman Keegan. They’re all, well, capable.
Need a film that will make you smile, alongside your kids, your grumpy mother-in-law, and your brother who’s a priest? The Breadwinner may just be the winning choice.
Author Bio:
Mark Orwoll, a Highbrow Magazine contributor, writes about travel, food, and drink for numerous outlets. He is the author of four books and the former International Editor of Travel + Leisure magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine