Boy, dad is a doofus! He is so embarrassing! He can’t do anything right. He can’t cook, take care of the kids or do anything around the house. We are probably all familiar with this version of fathers on television especially. Homer Simpson or Ray from “Everybody Loves Raymond” comes to mind. The stereotype of the bumbling father has been in place for years in various forms of media. The big screen is not immune from this trope either. Most often in comedies, we see dimwitted patriarchs who can’t seem to do anything right. We’re meant to laugh at these hapless oaths as the exasperated mom just shakes her head.
In addition to this stereotype, we see countless other types of “bad dads” on screen. Dads who push their kids too hard, dads who are consumed by their jobs and ignore their children, or dads who are basically absent. Is there any redeeming these guys?
In reality, we know that dads work hard for their families and are often just as involved at home and with the kids as moms are. So in honor of Father’s Day last Sunday, Rob and Bridget wanted to explore the ‘bad dad’ image, particularly in film, and see if we can give some redemption to these dads. We each picked a few movies that we enjoy with these types of fathers and argue why we should cut these guys a break! We also share some of our own dads’ movie favorites.
Before we get to the main topic, what are some of your dad’s favorite movies?
Bridget: These days, my dad, Terry, watches mostly whatever is on satellite as he’s flipping through, but some of his all-time favorites include westerns such as “Silverado,” “The Man from Snowy River,” and “Quigley Down Under.” He also added “Galaxy Quest” to the list and said he’s been enjoying the Melissa McCarthy masterpiece “Spy” lately.
Rob: When I think of my dad, Fred, one movie always comes to mind first: “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He and my mom watch it every year around Christmas, and I must be following in his footsteps because I got my wife to see it for the first time last holiday season. Beyond that, he listed the rest of his personal top 10 as follows: “The Replacements,” “Field of Dreams,” “Forrest Gump,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Back to the Future,” “The Lion King,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Dead Poets Society” and “Cool Hand Luke.”
Now, what are some of your favorite movies with “bad dads” who need some rethinking?
Bridget’s picks
1. “Mr. Mom” (1983) – Long before he was Birdman and a few years before he was Batman, Michael Keaton was Mr. Mom. In this comedy classic, Keaton plays Jack, an automobile engineer, who gets fired in the midst of the 80s recession. This leads to his wife, Caroline (Teri Garr), having to rejoin the workforce. Meanwhile, Jack becomes a full-time stay-at-home dad in charge of three small children and a million household tasks for which he seems completely ill-equipped. Of course, hilarity ensues as he navigates all of this.
Calling Jack a “bad dad” might be a stretch, because he certainly loved his family, but before he lost his job, he was pretty out-of-touch with them. His wife clearly did everything, including starting his morning shower, and yet Jack still had the gall to complain about how tired he was. When he gets laid off, he learns quickly how difficult parenting can be. Soon, household appliances are blowing up around him, the vacuum is attacking the kids while they continuously scream “you’re doing it wrong!” and “that’s not how mommy does it!”
Luckily, by the end of the movie, Jack mostly redeems himself. As his wife works long hours, he comes to appreciate her efforts and everything she has been doing without Jack seeming to notice. He bonds with his children and conquers most household tasks in his unique dad-style. As a parent myself, I think the movie teaches an important lesson about including dads in the work but understanding that dad might do things differently than mom. That doesn’t mean it’s the wrong way though. Predictably, Jack ends up getting his job back by the time the credits roll. We can just hope that he learned from his time home and will now be more of a super dad rather than bad dad.
2. “Captain Ron” (1992) – I recently purchased this movie on DVD to relive its greatness. We watched this one often as kids, and I think my dad still quotes it. I discovered in the course of writing this column that most critics disagreed with my love of the movie, considering it has a 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Nonetheless, I still enjoy it and it fits well for this topic.
Work-a-day schlub Martin Harvey (Martin Short) discovers he inherited a yacht and when family circumstances make it prudent to get away for a while, he decides to take his two kids and wife on a Caribbean vacation on the boat. The Harvey family soon discovers the yacht is a wreck and that the roguish, eccentric Captain Ron (Kurt Russell) that they are paying to sail the vessel is questionable to say the least. Silliness at sea ensues!
This movie more so fits into the bumbling dad stereotype. And boy, does dad look like a doofus compared to Captain Ron. Martin can’t figure out the boat, is bad at directions, and won’t heed warnings about pirates. He definitely isn’t as good-looking as Captain Ron! Of course, Martin ends up embarrassing his kids and wife, getting lost and even breaking down the boat.
The movie culminates in a high sea battle with pirates where dad Martin finally earns his stripes. Looking back though, I think we should cut him a break throughout the rest of the movie too. The guy wasn’t exactly planning to set sail at all. He only did so because his 16-year-old daughter showed up at the beginning of the movie with a stereotypical 90s burn out type boyfriend declaring she was getting married. Poor dad. He also tries his best to be responsible as fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants Captain Ron squeaks by in increasingly dangerous situations and looks like the hero. By the time Martin is considering shooting Ron with a flare gun, we’re almost hoping he does! They of course end up friends in the end as we also get a glimpse at Ron’s many shortcomings. The family literally sails into the sunset in the end with new respect for a formerly lame dad.
3. “Captain Fantastic” (2016) – Another ‘captain’ movie! This one is very different from the previous film though. Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen), his wife Leslie, and their six children live an isolated existence in the Washington wilderness. They are former left-wing activists disillusioned with capitalism and American life, who choose to instill survivalist skills and left-wing politics and philosophy in their children. They educate them to think critically, and train them to be physically fit and self-reliant without dependence on modern technology. When the family learns of Leslie’s tragic death, they must journey into the larger world to attend her funeral. This is when the complications with Ben’s system of raising his kids becomes evident.
It might be hard to call Ben a ‘bad dad’ in many senses. Afterall, his kids are much better educated than other kids their age despite not going to school. They are reading philosophy and the oldest child has been accepted into various Ivy League schools. Yet they are incredibly awkward in social situations. They don’t mind public nudity. The oldest accuses his dad of turning them into ‘freaks.’ Late in the movie, Ben sees his family starting to fall apart and questions everything about his parenting approach. He even decides to let the kids stay with their worldly grandparents after one child is almost seriously injured because of something Ben allowed.
I think we can safely say that Ben did make some bad decisions when it came to the safety of his kids. He was doing what he thought was best for his family given the questionable world he saw around him. He learns a hard lesson and by the end of the movie has changed in significant ways. The movie ends with a scene that is both fun, heart-warming and tear-jerking.
I highly recommend this movie if you missed it a few years ago. It was touted as one of the best independent films of 2016 and earned many accolades, including a Best Actor nominee for Viggo. Dad’s sins aside, “Captain Fantastic” sheds light on some important themes without being too preachy and is a really entertaining watch.
Rob’s picks
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Field of Dreams (1989) and JFK (1991)- When Kevin Costner gets obsessed with something– whether it’s building a baseball field on an Iowa farm or blowing the lid off of the most heinous conspiracy in American history– it’s a safe bet that his parental obligations are about to fall by the wayside. I kind of cheated with a double pick here, but the legendary actor, who’s played everyone from Jonathan Kent in the DC Extended Universe to family patriarch John Dutton in “Yellowstone,” is quite simply one of the most iconic dads in all of film and television.
We’re Iowans, so I probably don’t need to explain “Field of Dreams” to our readers. Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, does what any average corn farmer would do when he’s facing a midlife crisis: constructs a baseball field, drives across the country to track down a reclusive writer and a mysterious former ballplayer and reunites the infamous “Black Sox” team all in an attempt to reconnect with his own father. All the while, his wife (Amy Madigan) and daughter Karin (Gaby Hoffmann) are doing their best to keep the farm from foreclosure as Ray embarks on his spiritual sojourn.
And in “JFK,” which has an Iowa connection of its own (New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, the main character, was born and raised in Denison), Costner’s wife (played by Sissy Spacek) and their kids grow increasingly exasperated as he fixates on the ultimately unsuccessful prosecution of local businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones), who may or may not be connected to the CIA, anti-Castro Cuban exiles and a covert plot to install new leadership at the highest level of government.
It’s hard to deny that Costner shirks his duties as a dad in both films, but at least in one of them, everything works out and he learns a valuable lesson about the meaning of life in the end. On the other hand, it’s been almost 60 years now, and a sizable portion of the population (myself included) still doesn’t believe we’ll ever get the full story of what happened on November 22, 1963.
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The Mosquito Coast (1986)- With the recent Apple TV adaptation bringing Paul Theroux’s source novel and Peter Weir’s original film back into the public consciousness, it’s as good of a time as ever to talk about “The Mosquito Coast,” a rare Harrison Ford commercial flop that nonetheless stands as one of his most fascinating performances all these years later.
Ford’s Allie Fox bears more than a slight resemblance to Viggo Mortensen’s character in one of Bridget’s picks, “Captain Fantastic”: he’s a mad genius/egomaniac who’s disillusioned with American consumerism and decides to move his family off the grid. In Fox’s case, however, he takes it even further, relocating to Belize and attempting to introduce his inventions (including ice) to the native people of the jungle.
By the end of the movie, it’s pretty clear that his wife (Helen Mirren) and kids (one of whom is played by the late, great River Phoenix) just want to go back to the U.S. and be normal again, and the only way to do that is to ditch their psychotic father, who’s on a quixotic quest to prove how much smarter he is than everyone else. Allie is a tyrannical and oppressive dad, sure, but his kids probably had some great stories to tell about their formative years when they grew up.
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About Schmidt (2002)- Jack Nicholson’s most infamous turn as a dad came in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic “The Shining,” but readers can rest assured that I’m not going to make any effort to defend the actions of Jack Torrance. Axes should only be used on trees!
Although his late career output aside from the smash hit Oscar winner “The Departed” has been decidedly spottier than his heyday in the ‘70s and early ‘80s, Jack shined (forgive the pun) in Alexander Payne’s slice of life comedy-drama about Warren Schmidt, a recent retiree from Omaha who loses his wife suddenly and is forced to deal with the arrival of his daughter’s loathsome soon-to-be husband, played by Dermot Mulroney.
By the end of the movie, Schmidt seems to gain a new lease on life through his correspondence with a Tanzanian child and makes peace with Jeannie’s (Hope Davis’s) decisions, even if he doesn’t fully agree with them. Nicholson and Kathy Bates also share a hot tub scene that’s indescribably hilarious, and that’s all I’ll say without spoiling it.
Stay tuned for the latest edition of the column next week, and as always, send your feedback and/or topic suggestions to Bridget (news@wrightcountymonitor.com) or Rob (publisher@grundyregister.com). Thanks for reading!
