The movie is about a dad, played by standup comedian Nate Bargatze, who has to shift from being the breadwinner (the top Toyota salesman in his city) to a stay-at-home dad to three girls when his wife sells a share of her spiffy invention to one of the sharks on Shark Tank. Of course he's dreadful at it, and he doesn't actually get better. The disaster gets worse and worse, and it isn't just bad luck. It's bad character.
As a comic actor, Nate Bargatze lacks a certain something. Perhaps the best example is the scene where he gets his nose hair waxed. I had seen trailers for the movie that left in footage of his reaction that the movie wisely edited out. A talented comedic actor would have made the audience laugh. Bargatze? Crickets. If the aim of comedy is to make you squirm with discomfort and feel that people like you, as a group, are being treated as lame-ass morons, this movie succeeded brilliantly. I didn't like Nate's character and I wasn't particularly fond of the characters playing off of him.
The movie features Mandy Moore (A Walk to Remember) as Nate's wife, Zach Cherry (Severance) as his boss, Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley) as a rival salesman, SNL cast members Colin Jost and Will Forte as a (cough) rival house-dad and an incompetent roofing contractor respectively, and Brett Cullen (Lost, The West Wing) as Nate's dad who mostly helps out by eating pistachios and napping on the couch. And of course, the sharks as themselves. For what it's worth.
If any Three Scenes Made It For Me, and I did after all stay to watch the whole movie, it would have to be (1) Nate goes back to his dealership after assuming stay-at-home-dad duty and finds that Mr. "The Pecs Get the Checks" has already replaced him as the top salesman. (2) The youngest daughter's pet horse goes ape and destroys the house. (3) The Über Eats driver imagines himself as a member of the happy family – though this type of joke (also involving the roofing guy) has already been played several times.
For me, much of the pleasure of watching this movie came from the subversive thoughts that arose within me, imagining it ending with Nate getting divorced and losing visitation rights of his girls. I'm just a vindictive swine. But it would be a more believable ending than what the movie gave us. And I hasten to add that the closing credits featured excerpts from Bargatze's stand-up, on which the movie was apparently based, and that was no funnier. If anything good comes out of this movie, let it spare us further unfunny comedies based on Nate Bargatze's unfunny comedy.
