The Breadwinner - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

The Breadwinner



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:




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Movie
You know, comedians getting into film hasn’t been a “new” thing for pretty much the last 100 years, but not every single one is going to make smash hit films, no matter how many arenas they sell out for standup. For every Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, and Dave Chappelle, this is a Bert Kreischer and a Nate Bargatze. And hey, I actually kind of like Nate’s standup. It’s not my style, and it's very much a PG-kids-friendly sort of standup. But the man has this everyman’s favorite Dad persona that has made him the latest and greatest family-friendly comedian in the world right now. But like Bert Kreischer’s The Machine, Nate Bargatze’s The Breadwinner is a film that may have sounded good on paper, but in real life turns into as much of a train wreck as the actual events of the film portray.

Nate Bargatze is Nate Wilcox, a wheeling and dealing Toyota salesman extraordinaire who can bring home the bacon, while his lovely wife Katie (Mandy Moore) tends their idyllic suburban home. She’s a mastermind at managing a house, and he can sell a new Tacoma to a sailor who’s about to deploy to a submarine. But things change when one of Katie’s little homemaker inventions actually gets real notice by the members of The Shark Tank. And just like that, Katie is handed $100,000 to start up her new company, with the stipulation that Nate take some time off work and take care of the home while she’s off in South Korea overseeing the production of the “Starminder”.

And of course, lovable old dad thinks he can handle it, until he can’t. And that “can’t” happens to fall upon the very first day of being left alone with his three teenage (well, one’s a bit closer to pre-teen) daughters. Now he’s up to his ears trying to make dinner, fold the laundry, wash said laundry, make sure everyone has a healthy breakfast (which inevitably ends up being pizza after a while), and keeping his eldest daughter from getting too close to her wannabe boyfriend. And to make matters worse, poor Nate can’t seem to function as a human being, let alone a stay-at-home dad.

And this is really the crux of the problem with the movie. It leans so heavily into the worn-out trope of “the dad who can’t function as a human being, and makes an idiot of himself trying to take care of the house”. And while there are plenty of films that have successfully used that trope to satisfactory ends, The Breadwinner does NOT. Much like Bert Kreischer’s The Machine, it just leans so heavily into the absurd that it loses any sense of believability. I mean, when you have Nate trying to clean up an oatmeal-filled pot that was left out too long, the film has him using a power drill on it,t trying to grind out the baked-on oats. Or he’s so inept that there’s a constant running gag of whenever he opens the pantry, dry pasta keeps falling on his head because he can’t be bothered to ever put the container the right way up. Sure, I get that some dads are oblivious to the work their wives do in the home, but this pushes it to absurd levels that pull you straight out of the film. It feels like an SNL sketch, or something straight out of Reno 911.

On the plus side, Nate is giving it his all here. The man is a boundless pile of energy on stage, and he’s just as exuberant in the film. The man really did give the film his all. And we have a weirdly solid cast of comedic actors to back him up as well. Colin Jost is here as his goofy neighbor; Kumail Nanjiani is roided out to the max and hamming it up as the heel of the film. And Will Forte does his MacGruber bit just a little TOO well. But that can’t bring actual cohesion to a film that is based on a 15-minute SNL skit premise. The film just goes on too long, and the “lesson” at the end is about as trite as the “I’m an idiot man child” trope that gets ground into the ground within the first 30 minutes. About the only good thing in this film is Mandy Moore, who brightens up the room every time she appears on screen.




Rating:

Rated PG for some mild suggestive references.




Video:

The Breadwinner follows that very typical “everything looks and sounds great, but isn’t SPECTACULAR” mantra that most comedies fall into. Show digitally, everything looks glossy and clean, with bright colors, rich saturation levels, and decent blacks. Details are generally really good (though we get some soft interior shots here and there), and artifacting is pretty much nonexistent. Again, everything looks good here, and I have very little to say negative about the 2.39:1 AVC encode. About the only negative thing I can say is that it looks “good, but doesn’t draw attention to itself”. Simply put, it’s a solid-looking disc that does what is asked of it and doesn’t try to excel.







Audio:

Similarly, the 5.1 DTS-HD MA track sounds excellent, but isn’t the type of movie to really stretch the limitations of the 5.1 lossless capabilities of the Blu-ray disc. Dialog is the main attraction of the film, and we get some really nice up-front imaging with the mains when it comes to the hijinks that Nate gets into trying to take care of his home. Surrounds are used nicely, with good ambiance during the car scene near the end, or the screaming kids. But overall this is a very front-heavy comedy track with some tendrils of low end and surrounds that make you take notice. It’s a simple comedy track, and does what's asked of it, much like the video.










Extras:
View attachment 96669 • Audio commentary by director Eric Appel
• Making of Featurette
• Daditute, Sharks, and a Horse: Casting The Breadwinner
• Extended short: "A Standup on Set"
• Bloopers
• Deleted Scenes
• Line-O-Rama's

Final Score: ​

Again, the film is silly and harmless enough as a PG family-friendly watch, but it is NOT a clever film at all. Much like The Machine, I had a few chuckles here and there, and then started looking at my watch just begging for the credits to roll. And that makes me kind of sad considering how highly revered Bargatze is in the family-friendly comedy world. But it is what it is. And the solid audio and video scores along with some moderate extras may make an attractive package for fans of the film, but for the rest of us? No, just no.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Nate Bargatze, Mandy Moore, Wille Forte, Kumail Nanjiani, Colin Jost, Zach Cherry
Directed by: Eric Appel
Written by: Nate Bargatze, Dan Lagana
Aspect Ratio: 2.39:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 5.1, Spanish, French DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DVS
Subtitles: English SDH, English, French, Spanish
Studio: Sony Pictures
Rated: PG
Runtime: 99 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: August 25th, 2026

Recommendation: No, Just No