As happens with many comedies, the end credits for The Breadwinner feature outtakes.  With them are snippets of star Nate Bargatze’s stand-up comedy.  The comedian plays the title character, Nate Wilcox, and it is evident that much of what you are seeing here was inspired by the jokes he tells on stage.  This is not a criticism.  Rather, it is an observation.  Still, while I have never seen any of his routines, I have a feeling it is funnier than this movie.  Part of the reason I did not laugh is because it is a one-trick pony, which is a fitting cliché to use given that there is an actual horse during the proceedings.  What I am referring to are the gender stereotypes that are relied upon for the humor, which this Catholic would remind you is the result of modern American culture, not anything the Church teaches.  At least with our Faith, there is nothing that says a man is barred from taking care of the things we tell ourselves are best done by mom.  I have more to say on the subject, but I hope this synopsis will help contextualize this point.

The contextualization provided at the beginning of The Breadwinner explains how Nate came to be the eponymous person.  Mainly, it involves relying on his wife, Katie Wilcox (Mandy Moore), doing everything around the house so he can excel as the top salesman at a Nashville, Tennessee, Toyota dealership.  He loves being the top guy there with all the perks, like getting to be highlighted on the jumbotron at Titans games.  He claims to have duties at home, such as taking out the trash, but sometimes this small act falls through the cracks.  Katie has everything else figured out, with a special calendar in the kitchen to which she affixes reminders for everything that needs to be done.  For their three children, she has a device of her own creation she calls the “Star-Minder” to affix to their person with the specific tasks.  During a visit with some acquaintances of theirs, Katie’s friend, Angela Ashford (Kate Berlant), urges the would-be entrepreneur to try to make a business out of her invention.  At first, Nate is fine with his wife’s side-hustle as she is selling them at local fairs.  However, an opportunity comes up to pitch her product on Shark Tank (2009-present).  The panel appears interested at first until she tells them about her home life, with three kids and a husband who appears to love donuts more than one should, I guess.  To be frank, I did not understand this sequence.  He is asked, without warning, to go on television to explain whether he could handle stepping in for his wife if she builds a start-up company.  He is in the middle of munching on the pastry, but this is enough for everyone to say they are out except for Lori Greiner (as herself), who agrees to invest.  The agreement means Katie will be going away for two weeks to get everything launched.  To have the time to pick up the slack, Nate decides to take those days off from work, though his boss, Dan (Zach Cherry), behaves as if the lead salesman is committing a crime.  It is also treated as such by Nate’s main competition on the lot, Peyton (Kumail Nanjiani).  Then again, things do not get off to the most auspicious of beginnings at the house when Nate manages to lock him and his three daughters out of the house as Katie is departing.  It continues this way as he takes them to school, though he has to be told he is going in the wrong direction.  During this early misadventure, the girls call Katie to report on Nate’s ineptitude, but he wishes to keep it a secret.  It is good that he wants to make sure that his wife has the best possible chance at being successful, but this Catholic is here to tell you that lying is never a good idea.  It seems like he knows this as at one point he breaks the fourth wall to admit that if he did everything right, this would be a boring movie.  I do not have the mental energy to grant him this point, so we shall continue.  However, I am not sure how to do so because it is mainly scene-after-scene of him not knowing how to do basic chores.  For instance, instead of doing laundry, he sprays the clothes with Katie’s perfume.  The impetus for change is a brief return by her, only to be summoned for another fortnight by Lori to continue product development.  This time, instead of trying to be his wife, Nate decides to run the house like a car dealership.  This allows him to return to his job while delegating tasks to his daughters.  He rewards their performance, but it actually incentivizes them to behave in a selfish manner.  Things come to a head when their middle daughter, Hadley Wilcox (Birdie Borria), has a spelling bee on the same day as Nate is supposed to receive an award for salesman of the year.  He leaves in the middle of the contest in order to accept the honor, only to have her get there in tears over him being absent.  Next, they return home to eldest daughter, Gracie Wilcox (Stella Grace Fitzgerald), having a party when she is only supposed to be hosting a small study group.  Finally, the horse Nate had purchased the youngest daughter, Sam Wilcox (Charlotte Ann Tucker), to get her to stop misbehaving at school, runs into the house and wrecks the interior.  It is capped off by the shoddy workmanship done by the suspect roofing contractor, Keegan (Will Forte), collapsing.  This all occurs as Katie announces she is returning to do a live stream at their home as a way of selling Star-Minder.  Once Nate apologizes to his daughters, he convinces them to help set up the Ashford home as a temporary base, although this lie is exposed when Angela walks in and wonders what is happening.  What saves the day is Nate’s impassioned apology, saying that he had done it all to help Katie.  It works, and we conclude with them at a Titans game, with him being the director of sales for her new company.

In other words, The Breadwinner’s conclusion is that it does not have to be the man who fills the title role.  Again, this is fine by Catholic standards, though I am not sure that it warrants a feature length movie to explain this fact.  I realize that last sentence is misleading.  After all, there is nothing in this film that specifically pertains to Catholicism.  Instead, what it is relying on for humor are stereotypes that have been perpetrated mainly by Christian nationalists.  Under these so-called rules, the wife’s domain is the home and the children, and the husband facilitates it all with the money he makes.  The system supposedly absolves him from any responsibility when he is off work, which is plainly wrong.  What is more troublesome is that Nate seemingly does not know how to do basic things like dishes and laundry.  If a man is clueless as to how these things function, then he should not get married.  Things are different in Catholicism, though an argument could be made that many Catholic households adhere to this misguided pattern.  Where you do not see this function is among female and male religious communities.  With the absence of the other sex, everyone living there has to perform the chores that it takes to operate as a household.  This means monks cooking for one another, and nuns mowing the lawn, for example.  As such, there is nothing silly about what happens here, but it is portrayed in the most absurd way in an attempt to be funny.

While I did not laugh much while watching The Breadwinner, there is one line in it that fits well with Catholic teaching.  It comes from Keegan of all people, who is clearly not up to the task of fixing the roof.  Yet, again for comedic purposes, he is allowed to continue putting holes on top of the house.  At any rate, when Nate is at his lowest, Keegan advises that the dad’s only recourse is to keep showing up.  As crazy as this might sound given the source, Keegan is correct from a Catholic point of view.  In a basic sense, it is why we call it “practicing the Faith.”  God asks that we obey the Sabath, but if we miss a Sunday, we do not stop going.  Instead, we ask God for forgiveness (Confession for us Catholics) because of our contriteness for our disobedience to this commandment.  Prayer can be seen in the same light.  Much of the time it feels like nothing is happening, and it seems as if we are mentally shouting into a void.  Yet, we need to trust that not only are we being heard, but that God will answer, and hopefully that is enough to keep us praying.  In general, maintaining a relationship is about continuing to show up, and it is no different with God.  To keep up with anyone, most especially with God, we need to persist in doing what He asks of us.  This is something Nate must learn, though it comes without a religious connection.  He wants to go back to the stereotypical, aloof dad he had always been.  Instead, he comes to understand that being a good father means showing up in earnest for our loved ones, and God knows this better than anyone.

Despite the good lesson, The Breadwinner is not better than I expected.  Put another way, it is everything I thought it would be, but in the most over-the-top manner.  I am all for people learning the error of their ways, but I wish this one came in a funnier package.