“You gotta put in work.”
That’s the lesson learned by Nate Bargatze’s character in The Breadwinner, the comedian’s first attempt to translate his hit standup act to the big screen. Bargatze plays an ordinary guy named Nate (next-level galaxy-brain casting) who loves his family in a disinterested sort of way. He’s the breadwinner, you see, while his wife Katie (Mandy Moore) performs the traditional housewife duties of cooking and cleaning and taking the kids to and from school.
Then Moore’s character becomes a successful inventor and needs to go on a prolonged business trip, which means Nate must take a sabbatical from his job to care for their three daughters — with predictably disastrous results in the short term, and valuable life lessons learned about the importance of “showing up” in the long term. Hence: “You gotta put in the work.”
That may not be the only way in which Bargatze is “putting in the work” in The Breadwinner, which was a flop in theaters but is currently among the most-watched films on Netflix. He plays a salesman onscreen — and he works as a salesman throughout the movie as well. The Breadwinner is as much a story as it is a shameless vehicle to pitch viewers a whole bunch of products and chain retailers. This movie is selling stuff to the audience from literally its very first shot to its very last. I am hard-pressed to think of another recent film with so much egregious product placement.
Don’t believe me? See for yourself.
Egregious Product Placement in The Breadwinner
Nate Bargatze’s The Breadwinner contains some of the most egregious product placement in any recent Hollywood movie.
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