From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Mr. Mom, released in 1983.
Starring:
Michael Keaton, Teri Garr, Frederick Koehler
Directed by:
Stan Dragoti
Genre:
Comedy, Drama
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
PG
Budget:
N/A
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
6.5
The Synopsis is:
Jack Butler is laid off of his job as a car company executive and his wife Carol Butler lands a job as an advertising executive. Their roles are switched as Jack learns how to be Mr. Mom taking care of 3 kids and managing the household chores.
There may be some spoilers in this written review.
Mr. Mom was one of three gender role reversal films produced in the 1980’s. The other two were Baby Boom (1987), and 3 Men and a Baby (1987).
John Hughes wrote the script and was naturally asked to direct, but he turned it down and Stan Dragoti became the director of the film and moved the production to Chicago, where he loved to shoot many his films. Much of the pick up footage was shot in Hollywood.
The film was inspired by real life events of Television Executive Lynn Loring, who’s husband found himself unemployed, and she returned to the workforce after retiring to be a housewife. As well, John Hughes found himself in a similar circumstance where he had to look after his two children while his wife was away.
Now it’s debatable whether or not the topic of this film is antiquated and a product of its time because even though it was customary for many men to take on jobs to support their family while their wives stayed at home and took care of the household, there was always an exception to the rule where wives were the main breadwinners or both partners worked.
And even though it’s not fair to assume as much, such household agreements are still going on today where many women are opting to be housewives. And there are often very good reasons why, such as keeping the babies and small children in a safe environment until they can go to school and also homeschooling.
This is a subject matter that a lot of homemakers of big families can relate to, especially if you’ve had to take care of more than one small child at a time.
I’d also like to consider the fact that prior to the 1990’s many (not all) male and female children were traditionally raised quite differently from one another. Many women were raised doing household chores like vacuuming and boys were assigned chores like mowing the lawn. I watched this first hand with many of my friends and cousins.
Although I have discussed how this topic is real, the story itself and the way it is told in the film with it’s sheer volume of mishaps that Jack encounters is hilariously unbelievable. It is a fantasy of errors, for a lack of a better term.
However, I could think of one or two times each thing that happened in the film has happened to me personally at separate times in my life. The film puts every bad experience and worst case scenario for every task such as shopping at a grocery store or having a small baby eat something that created disastrous results.
Of the many hilarious challenges Jack has is Jaws the curtain eating vacuum cleaner, the washing machine monster, the wayward popcorn machine, and figuring out how to drop his kids off to school for the first time.
The pacing was a bit slow going, especially in the middle, but I think that is because Jack goes through 3 stages of the hero’s journey.
The first stage was the awkward phase and denial. Jack really starts out cocky and a little sensitive about his masculinity which is pushed to the brink of his tender ego. He gets fired and as soon as his wife says she has a job prospect, he wants to bet that he can beat her at finding a job.
It’s kinda cute, because it’s something he doesn’t double down on later in the film. He lets it go and changes as a character and the film focuses more on his growth.
In the second phase Jack is getting by, but he has a bad attitude about it all. He is learning how to get things done, but in the Jack way, meaning that he cares less about the consequences and more about being left to his devices… the little things that give him joy. Even still, he has a boyish charm and sense of fun the whole time, even when he is clearly having a hard time psychologically. You can see he feels minimized and demoralized by this whole experience. He’s so likable even when we watch him make obvious terrible decisions.
Then he gets into the last phase of not only conquering his challenges on the physical plane but also his mental challenges too, doing things for the right reasons and the right outcomes. He becomes the true hero to himself and his family.
The leading man Jack has a long list of actors considered for the role, such as Chevy Chase, Michael Douglas, Steve Martin, John Travolta, Robin Williams, John Goodman, and George Segal. Michael Keaton snagged the role, turning down the lead in Splash (1984) to do this movie.
Michael Keaton has a way with his characters that is pretty much the same, just at different stages of awareness that feels so comfortable and real. Somehow, it’s fresh in each role and he puts a smile on your face as you watch his performance as Jack.
The role of Carol Butler is wonderfully portrayed by Teri Garr with a comedic feisty charm to balance out Jack’s antics.
The film focuses on Jack, but it does spend quite a bit of time with Carol and depicting the issues she was dealing with as a woman in the workplace. Although she was excellent as an advertising executive, she was still encountering sexual harassment and a very scary entrapment situation by her boss.
I thought it was very interesting that the film sets up both Jack and Carol with slimy admirers. Carol gets her boss Ron Richardson and Jack gets Joan. Both of these characters are fully played for laughs and Joan was one of my favorites in the film because of how transparent she is, just waiting for an opportunity to slide into Carol’s spot. It’s very satisfying to see her get busted and confronted about what she is doing by Carol. They are supposed to be friends after all.
I also loved the way Carol is the one to dispel Ron on her own, not needing her husband to step in and exert his dominance. She can do it on her own and I loved that. But let’s get real, she was in an awful situation with Ron that in real life might not have gone in Carol’s favor. And sadly that kind of entrapment happens more often than you can image, for both men and women.
I loved the dialogue. The dialogue is jammed packed with mature innuendos subtly placed within which I loved. It’s definitely not a film for kids, but you know, watching this film as a kid didn’t melt my brain. I had a lot of fun watching it. I suppose one of the reasons this film is such a fond one to me is the fact that in 1983-1984 HBO and Showtime use to play this over and over again several times a day for months and months. I’d watch it every time because it was hilarious to me even though I didn’t fully get all of the jokes.
At the time, my mom was an only parent raising me and my younger brother who was a baby. I was mini mom around the place doing household jobs to help the family so I could identify with this film a lot.
Even to this day, I get the biggest chuckle from the fantasy death scene in the film where Carol shoots Jack while the theme from the very popular daytime soap opera at the time, The Young and The Restless, plays in the background (Nadia’s Theme). It is one of the most hilarious death scenes in my opinion coming in second place to the death scene given by Paul Reubens in Buffy the Vampire Slayer released in 1992.
The film also utilizes other famous themes such as in Rocky, Jaws and Chariots Of Fire for comedic effect. Many of the jokes I must admit are timely for 1983, and less funny to those who have grown up in the more modern age.
One joke that is quite timely for 1983 was “the woobie talk.” One of the children, Kenny, is attached to a blanket he calls his wobbie. Jack sits down and has a cute conversation about how Kenny’s wobbie can lead him down a road that's disastrously addictive to bedding (like an addiction to drugs).
At the time the country was experiencing a well publicized “War on Drugs” and in 1982, Nancy Reagan began the phrase "Just Say No" to elementary students. It was a pretty big deal back then. This is part of the reason this is so funny to the older generation.
Maybe it's all due to the quality of acting and the cacophony of happenstance for Jack and Carol but
I just love this family. And I love the story of a man realizing that while being the sole financial provider of his family fed his ego, the greater satisfaction is being a great partner and father.
Sadly, the story reverses back to Jack getting his job back and Carol quitting her job. However, it was still a good effort to show us how gender doesn’t matter when it comes to providing the basics for a family.
For me, this is a nostalgic revisiting, but to this day the film still has the power makes me laugh!
My Rating:
8.4
That sums up my quick spoiler free review. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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