Fatherhood is a cute movie about being a dad, and a set of difficulties and obstacles one can expect to face as a single father. It’s not a revolutionary, original or even unique sort of story, in that there’s nothing new being talked about or explored.
Hart goes Hard
Kevin Hart gets to flex his chops as a serious, dramatic actor, and wears tight professional clothes so we can see how buff he is, and goes shirtless a bit so we can see how hot he is. He’s pretty attractive. He has struggles with his in-laws, but those are sort of brushed away when he does the overly dramatic thing when he goes back to his daughter and chooses to abandon his business trip.
This would be a pivotal moment if we built up a conflict with his job expectations a bit more. However, the career doesn’t seem to cause all that much difficulty. He’s allowed to go basically shirtless so he can caress his daughter in the middle of a presentation, his boss seems as sympathetic as an old white man can be. He still gets a big fat promotion. So his decision during the climax to not go on this trip doesn’t necessarily mean that he won’t get the promotion, and it didn’t seem like it was even the reason why he leaves his daughter with the in-laws. He leaves his daughter because she gets hurt, and he was unable to get to her as soon as he could because he was with a woman. So the issue was his fledgling relationship, not his career.
Unearned Dramatic Payoff
There’s just a jumble of issues and priorities and sources of emotional drama, and unfortunately there wasn’t much that tied it all together neatly, and we were given just a generic sort of finish where the good guy works hard, gets everything he wants, and we go running off for some ice cream.
Fatherhood is a cute movie, and his relationship with his daughter is an adorable set of anecdotes and events. The movie is cute and is a classic ‘feel good’ film. Hart is excellent, and there’s little to none of his usual loud, crass ‘I’m a short guy’ humor. I appreciate his range, but he’s not particularly expressive or committed to this type of ‘sadboi’ role. He’s not bad at it, he’s just not great at it. 4/10. I felt frustrated that the movie thinks it’s done something great with its story, but it really hasn’t.
You can watch Fatherhood on Netflix.
85scenes Reviews 
Leave a comment