Mr. Mom
Critics at the time of the film’s release compared it to an extended sitcom episode with mixed results. I tend to agree with that assessment. At times, the movie can definitely feel like a sitcom. For example, it takes on its central gender issue with the most straightforward subversion: that circumstances require the dad to stay at home while the mother works. It eschews its potential for particularly biting satire, instead finding much of its early humor in the standard gags about how men/dads don’t know anything about running a household. However, a few things elevate it above that point, if only slightly.
For starters, the best thing the movie does is present the wife going to work and the husband staying home not as intrinsically emasculating, remarkably progressive for a slightly hacky comedy of the 1980s. The theme of emasculation does rear its ugly head later, but more centered around how others see the situation than the opinions of the central couple themselves, with some added subtext of male to male competitiveness.
Another thing the film does well is in taking the main flip of the conceit and splitting it into two narratives. Rather than do the obvious thing, focusing exclusively on the bumbling and incompetence of the father, it looks at how both the husband and the wife cope with their new roles. This gives space to give them both more satisfying character arcs.
The husband, obviously, deals with the unfamiliarity of home life. He fails to understand how to manage the kids, unsuccessfully tries to find shortcuts for various daily household tasks, and otherwise makes a general mess of things. While outwardly, this is cliche schtick about men being hopeless, there is actually a solid subtext here about a man getting depressed over losing his job, and therefore his sense of identity, hitting rock bottom, and learning to see value in his life again in order to bounce back. This doesn’t completely save the film from vaguely misandrist representations of the useless but full of hubris husband, but it helps raise the quality of the film’s story just that little bit.
The wife also encounters her own set of gendered problems, mainly around workplace harassment. This story is somewhat the inverse of the male half, in terms of cliche and predictability. The first half is a fairly nuanced look at how preferential treatment at work can be insidious, sow discord with coworkers through perceived preferential treatment, and how seemingly innocent actions can actually be subtle gateways to future impropriety. However, when the shoe finally drops and the harassment is made obvious, the film falls into sitcom-esque banality. This isn’t the most surprising outcome, seeing as this is a comedy, but how broad the film chooses to take this element just speaks to the film’s general tone.
The film ultimately builds into a wild climax where many different threads from each of their stories cross paths in the most dramatic of ways, not unlike the end of Crazy Stupid Love. While the end of Mr. Mom has a similar level of zaniness and joy in seeing all the puzzle pieces fit together, the way in which they fit isn’t quite as sublime as in Crazy Stupid Love, perhaps, in part, because there are fewer surprises.
Mr. Mom began as a made for TV movie written by a first time screenwriter, largely based on the quality of the work Hughes had done for the National Lampoon. Though the project eventually grew into the feature film we have today, I can’t help but feel that the movie never quite outgrew the broad, cliched pitfalls of 1980s television on its way there.
Would Recommend: If you want to see where John Hughes started his career.
Would Not Recommend: If even a whiff of cliche is enough to set your teeth on edge.