Tagline: Caroline’s a rising executive. Jack just lost his job. Jack’s going to have to start from the bottom up.
Curiosity: It was $3.99, that’s why.
Plot: Jack (Michael Keaton) is a car engineer. Or, he was. After getting laid off, Jack and his wife Caroline (Teri Garr) both search for work, with Caroline inexplicably becoming a high power advertising executive within weeks (Oh, John Hughes, I want to live in your world…) while Jack stays home to raise their three children. It’s an awkward transition for Jack as he gets to know all the stay-at-home mothers in the neighborhood. One mother in particular, Joan (Ann Jillian), really wants to get to know Jack.
I mean she wants to have sex with him.
Thoughts: I think of Mr. Mom as the I Love You, Man of its day – both films suffer from conservative, insulting scripts but were partially redeemed by their respective leads. Just as Paul Rudd and Jason Segel made Man entertaining, so too did Michael Keaton and Teri Garr in Mr. Mom. Keaton in particular knocks out riff after riff.
While some of the scenes are good on their own (like when Keaton tries to understand the insane hierarchy of grocery stores, a bit that’s still true to life), the film’s sexism renders the plot, well, plotless. The movie pushes this idea that Jack really, really needs to get a job to be happy, but Caroline finds a high paying job pretty easily. Jack really could be a good stay-at-home dad, but for some reason the movie hammers home that this is socially and morally wrong. It’s disconcertingly conservative.
But then Jack drops a neurotic speech about his beard status or Rocky and I start to come around. Mr. Mom has held up better than other Hughes movies, but not by much.
Reflection: Man, Keaton used to be really funny…
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