This is one of a few gender role reversal movies from the 80s - 3 Men and a Baby (1987), Baby Boom (1987), Tootsie (1982, and the best of them), Victor/Victoria (1982), and probably Yentl (1983). In this one a fresh-faced Michael Keaton - in his first top-billed role - is furloughed as a car plant exec and forced to stay home and take care of the kids while his rising corporate exec wife - Teri Garr, who I always like in everything she does - goes off to the office and succeeds massively.
The rest of the plot kind of writes itself - he struggles in the grocery store, she struggles with sexist coworkers, he struggles with crazy kids, she struggles with the glass ceiling, etc etc etc. Not much to really report here, not worth rehashing in any detail.
Keaton is good, naturally funny and easygoing and really lives in the role. You totally believe he's just learning to do this "kid" thing. The movie was written by John Hughes - his second screenplay after National Lampoon's Class Reunion - and so it's filled with a lot of the usual John Hughesian hallmarks - families in turbulence, a cynical look at corporate America, the inevitable conflicts between work and home, parents and kids, husband and wife, etc. And, as usual, he finds a boatload of humor in it and brings it out sharply.
The supporting cast is incredible - Martin Mull, Jeffrey Tambor, Ann Jillian, Christopher Lloyd, Fred Koehler, Edie McClurg, every corner of the movie is inhabited by some familiar face you know and, sometimes, love.
One downside is the music. Not having seen this in many years, when the opening credits came on to a late-70s sit-com flutey little tune I was sorely disappointed. The music is - no offense to the composer - strictly TV quality.
The movie was a huge, huge hit - according to Wikipedia it brought home $64,000,000 domestic, which was enough for studio execs to wisely say "That John Hughes... let's sign him, BUT QUICK." Which they did, to a three movie deal, and those three movies turned out to be Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science - three films in the upper upper pantheon of '80s film.
The director is Stan Dragoti, who made only six pictures in twenty years, or roughly one every three years. Besides Mr. Mom, his other well known movie is The Man With One Red Shoe (1985), which is a great farce starring Michael Keaton's arch-nemesis Tom Hanks. Bill Simmons of Grantland.com has a great thesis that certain actors end up competing for the same roles, with the inevitable result that only one can succeed. He claims Keaton and Hanks were two that competed for the same positions until ultimately Hanks turned on the turbo and "won."
However, the two movies Dragoti made last are the ones I knew best after this one - She's Out of Control (1989) and Necessary Roughness (1991). We'll get to the former in the course of this blog.
I was surprised that Mr. Mom only gets a ~6/10 on IMDB. When I was a kid it was a movie pretty much everyone knew and liked and nobody would have said it was less than average. I would have guessed 7/10 at least. Very strange.
Either way, if you haven't seen it it's worth a watch for the John Hughes script alone. There are hints of Home Alone and Uncle Buck and other later movies strewn throughout, which is a real joy for an '80s/'90s movie fan. Check it out.
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