Nate Bargatze is a standup comedian from Nashville, Tennessee. He started over 20 years ago. He's worked with fellow comedians and talk show hosts, such as Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon. In fact, he was part of Fallon's "Clean Cut Comedy Tour" in 2013. He had his own special on Comedy Central in 2015. He had another special on Netflix in 2017, which upped his profile. He started a podcast in 2020. He was even nominated for Best Comedy Album at the 64th Grammy Awards in 2022. I didn't become aware of Bargatze till he hosted Saturday Night Live (1975) in October, 2023, and then again in 2024. That job really upped his profile, making him the highest-grossing comic of 2024. As is the case, a popular comedian will often get his own sitcom or a Hollywood film. Often, that film will be somewhat of an adaptation of material from that comedian's standup act. The year Bargatze was blowing up, Bert Kreischer released his film The Machine (2023), which was an adaptation of a joke from Kreischer's act.
Here, Bargatze stars as Nate Wilcox, a car salesman who lives in Nashville. He's the number-one salesman at the Toyota dealership. We don't know what makes him number-one or why he's any better than his job than his co-workers. Yet, he's married and has three daughters. He loves his family, but it's clear that he considers his role as being the breadwinner or the person whose income is what supports everyone. He doesn't do any housework or any home economics, in terms of managing their domestic lives. His wife takes care of all of it, and she does so rather impeccably. All of that changes when his wife leaves the country for a couple weeks and Nate has to be the one who manages things inside the home. This film proceeds to be a loose remake of Mr. Mom (1983), originally written by John Hughes, and starring Michael Keaton. That film was about a stay-at-home dad and how swapping a husband and wife's gender roles usually results in the man finding it more challenging. Yet, that 1983 film did ascribe some difficulty to the wife. That's not exactly the case here.
Mandy Moore (This Is Us and A Walk to Remember) co-stars as Katie Wilcox, the wife to Nate, and mother to his daughters. She has developed a very efficient system for managing the house. She's even invented a device that reflects her system that she hopes to sell. When an investor buys her idea and wants to market it, Katie has to take off on a 2-week business trip where she'll be out of the house and away from her kids for the first time. She knows it will be a lot for her husband, but she trusts him when he says he' can handle it. We don't know her husband as well as she does, but even from the first, few minutes we see him on screen, it's obvious her trust is completely unfounded.
The majority of the comedy is Nate not handling it and screwing things up. A lot of it is propagated by Nate being an idiot or being so disconnected from his children's lives. Nate messes things up and causes a disaster in the home. He tries to balance his work at home with his work at the dealership and causes more of a disaster. All of it is meant to underline the balancing of work and home life that women and wives have been doing for decades. At the end when Nate is perhaps less of a dummy, his troubles seem to boil down to scheduling conflicts, but the situation that's set up at the end is a bit of a straw man.
Bargatze spends a lot of time doing pratfalls or being the straight man to a lot of quirky characters that surround him. I don't think it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if this film were produced by Lorne Michaels. So much of the film is populated with a supporting cast that's pulled from the SNL roster, including past and even recent cast-members, such as Will Forte and Martin Herlihy who bring their usual style and energy to this film. Current SNL cast-member and writer, Colin Jost plays Conor Ashford, a quirky stay-at-home dad who's desperate to befriend Nate, while Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick and Silicon Valley) plays Peyton, a fellow car salesman who's desperate to belittle Nate. Zach Cherry (Severance and Fallout) rounds out the cast as Dan, Nate's boss at the dealership who has no problem prioritizing work over family.
Yet, all of them have a quirky character to play. Each are given some kind of weird trait or personality to depict. Bargatze wasn't really given anything to play, other than being an idiot at doing basic house chores. It's one thing to depict a man being overwhelmed with things he's not used to doing. It's another to simply have him be a complete idiot. For example, one scene has him wonder why a toaster doesn't work and he can't piece together that it was unplugged. Maybe if the film played up his idiocy to a more absurd degree, such as in The Naked Gun (1988), that would've helped. I get that the intention is to shine a light on stay-at-home moms or even working moms. Society and men have undervalued what moms do. Yet, the film uses such a straw man to make that point. Of course, Katie or any wife looks like a miracle worker or a genius compared to the idiocy and incompetence that is Nate.
Rated PG for some mild suggestive references.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 39 mins.
In theaters.
