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Main: What do Kevin Hart and Liam Neeson have in common?

Episode Summary

Kevin Hart’s Fatherhood and the evolution of single parents on screen — from deadbeat dads to supermums. All in this episode with Alexei Toliopoulos and Gen Fricker.

Episode Notes

Kevin Hart’s Fatherhood and the evolution of single parents on screen — from deadbeat dads to supermums. All in this episode with Alexei Toliopoulos and Gen Fricker.

Episode Transcription

Gen Fricker:

We know there are great fathers out there.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah.

Gen Fricker:

It's like when you see in ads where it's like, "Oh, hubby, don't put the baby in the dishwasher." And you're just like, "What? No one's doing that."

Gen Fricker:

Hello I'm Gen Fricker.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Hello I'm Alexei Toliopoulos.

Gen Fricker:

And this is the big film buffet.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

A podcast for pop culture fans and people looking for what to watch recommendations.

Gen Fricker:

Today, it's our main course and we're going to recommend you a Netflix film to pop on over the weekend.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And of all the films to pop on over the weekend, we are talking about the Kevin Hart starring vehicle Fatherhood.

Speaker 3:

Excuse me. She's been crying for hours.

Speaker 4:

Sorry, but this is a group for new mothers.

Speaker 3:

On that sign out there it says parents. I'm a parent and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Girl's got some stuff flying out of her ass, so she can either hit you with a streamer or she'll buckshot you. It's a quick wop.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

So this movie new fatherhood stars, Kevin Hart, as a new father who seemingly has a perfect life with his perfect wife, but then one day things do take a turn for the rather quite sad, and his wife passes away after giving birth to their newborn daughter. And now Kevin Hart, as the father must decide to raise his daughter by himself, despite his inner circle's doubts about whether he's actually up to the challenge.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, it's based on the true story of the real life Matthew Logelin, who wrote a memoir called, Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss and Love about losing his wife 27 hours after their child was born, and dealing with the first year of raising his daughter alone.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

On the topic of the book, when this film was first in development as an adaptation, it was actually Channing Tatum who was originally cast in that lead role.

Gen Fricker:

Obviously that didn't work out, and now we have Kevin Hart playing Matthew Logelin, whose production company HartBeat productions took over. And it's interesting because most of the cast is black, which I feel is a very different take, and it has a very different undertone than if we had seen a movie starring Channing Tatum as a recently widowed father. The cast is incredible. Alfre Woodard is a standout as Marianne, Kevin Hart's mother-in-law in this thing. We've got Lil Rel Howery, as we historically stan on this.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh man.

Gen Fricker:

We've talked about him in Bad Trip, in Good Boys.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And now Fatherhood, he's run the whole gamut.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, and then Anthony Carrigan's in it, who I love from Barry.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

The HBO series with Bill Hader, love that show, love him in it. It hits this very specific tone of being, I would almost say like a Sunday afternoon movie. I think you're going to find the emotions that you're seeking to purge yourself at the end of the week, you're going to find some deep sadness, some heartfelt moments, some challenging moments, and some moments of watching Kevin Hart be challenged in rather humorous ways of trying to raise his daughter all by himself.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. It's an interesting choice for Kevin Hart. I think, while there are comedic moments in this film, it's definitely not a comedy. And so it's quite interesting to see him step into this more leading man role.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Who would you recommend this movie to?

Gen Fricker:

It definitely deals with some heavier type of things, but I think honestly I could see a whole family sitting down and watching this on a Sunday afternoon, like you said. There's elements of what family is and chosen family, like bringing your friends in as part of your family. And grief, I think that's something that isn't quite covered with so much heart, for want of a better term.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes. Heart. And we are spelling it H-A-R-T.

Gen Fricker:

But yeah, there's definitely moments in there which I'm like, I think everyone could get something out of this.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I think so too, and it is in this tradition of single parent movies. I think of one of my favourite movies, Big Daddy, which is also on Netflix. I would give that as a one, two recommendation. And another film on Netflix I really like is a John Singleton directed film, starring Tyrese Gibson, who is a baby daddy, and it's called Baby Boy. It's a great coming of later age movie, if you will, and almost a followup to John Singleton's Boys In The Hood.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, I guess all those movies are about men coming of age to the crucible of parenthood.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely, right.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, and I think we should add on the idea of grief. Not the same movie at all, but The Babadook.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Wow. Single parent grief stricken movie, absolutely.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah yeah yeah. Gender reversed Babadook, before the spooky stuff happens.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It's interesting. The men are coming of age in the wake of fatherhood, and that is their single parent movies. But for single mother movies, they're stuff like The Babadook.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. It is interesting to note the difference right? The movies that we've been listing, like Big Daddy and stuff. It's all just the main challenge of the movie is, how is this guy going to do this without a woman?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah.

Gen Fricker:

Whereas a lot of single mom films are, this single mom has to take down a drug cartel to survive or deal with a literal demon in her house.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Fight literal evil that is seeping up from the floorboards.

Gen Fricker:

Totally, it is interesting how we treat these stories between moms and dads, because I don't know sometimes I do feel like it's a bit reductive towards men to be like, oh, I'm just a guy, how am I going to deal with this? When we know there are great fathers out there.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah.

Gen Fricker:

It's like when you see in ads where it's like, oh, hubby don't put the baby in the dishwasher. And you're just like, what? No one's doing that.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, do you think single dads, they don't get enough credit in cinema?

Gen Fricker:

I think the way we're used to the story being told is through this very [inaudible 00:06:10] are the pants on the head?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Like a man-child.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah, totally.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Like a man-child movie. I mean Big Daddy is that, three men and a baby and three men and little ladies, just three hapless comedic dudes, not knowing how to raise a child, they've got no woman in their life. And they're just like, yeah, I don't know, why don't we act to the kid? We're all young actors let's sing at the kids.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. Yeah. Whereas you look at a movie like Erin Brockovich, where it's like, in order to protect her children, she has to become part of the legal system and this huge class action and that kind of thing. I don't know. I just, it is interesting. How do you feel about it as a man, watching these movies?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Well, I am not a father, so perhaps I would have a different... The only thing I'm the father of is my beautiful little podcasts, and they raised themselves. I think that, there is that thing of the man-child being an accessible point in cinema to express men still coming of age. No matter what life they're living in, no matter what era in their life they're in. And I think that is a strong cinematic arc that is kind of relatable, because I guess it's like, the two different ways of looking at it is like, yeah, parenthood is one of the greatest challenges in life, because you're bringing a whole nother person into this world. So you really cannot eff it up. You cannot eff it up. And the stakes of that are so high. I think there's the two ways of going around it are the comedic version and then the serious version.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And through the male lens of those things, even in the more serious version, it's still something like Kramer vs Kramer, where they have tantrum arguments and they get stuck into it. But it still is this failure to communicate or something like that. Or revenge movies, like Taken or something like that, where you've got Liam Neeson going out trying to find his daughter, because she was going to see U2 live on tour and then she got snatched up. Or even movies really about finding love again. And I don't think that's something that we see from the single female point of view. Even this movie, Fatherhood, we've got Kevin Hart finding a new partner and trying to restart his dating life in some way.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. Maybe it's putting it too bluntly, but perhaps it's movies about single mothers start with an idea that a single mother is enough to be a family. And maybe with movies about single dads, we're getting this idea that they have to learn a lesson, they have to be a hero, or they have to find love again before they can be a family for the children. I also think it's a very heteronormative way of looking at family, just from a storytelling point of view, there's this idea of women in refrigerators right? Where so often a woman has to die or be eliminated from the story before a man's heroic arc or journey begins.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. It's the catalyst for them getting their life together, or for kicking ass or something like that.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. And the phrase, women in refrigerators was a term that came from a writer called Gail Simone.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I love Gail Simone. She's a great DC comic book writer.

Gen Fricker:

Yep. She penned Birds of Prey.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I love Birds of Prey.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. And she was talking about an incident in Green Lantern, in the comic books where Green Lantern comes home to his apartment and finds that his girlfriend has been murdered and stuffed in a fridge. Yeah. And then that's when he begins his hero's journey. And once you know that concept, you start seeing it a lot in movies. Obviously Fatherhood is based on a true story, so it's not exactly the same point, but I think it is interesting to notice it when you are engaging with films and culture in general, that it is quite often a trope that women have to die before a man learns a lesson.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

It's giving a character over to a plot point rather than any kind of their own agency. And I think as well, it's used as a way to present masculinity on screen as we're talking about it. Whereas it is always about softening the man, allowing them to give in to their emotions or something in these types of movies, to allow them to feel these emotions, something like that.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. Like that something terrible has to happen before they can be connected to their emotions. And again, I just find maybe we're beyond that, maybe we've moved beyond that as a culture?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I hope so, I'm quite an emotional fella.

Gen Fricker:

You are, this is why we love you Alexei. All of their pod children

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Wow. Because I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. You do. You're a creamy little dreamboat.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Gen, of all the cinematic daddies, who is your dream daddy, your father figure of film?

Gen Fricker:

My dream daddy? I can't say I haven't thought about this before, because I have, and there's a very clear answer to me. It's the dad in Call Me By Your Name.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Whoa, Michael Stuhlbarg's father.

Gen Fricker:

Yes. First of all, what is going on with that family? Where they're all just like, oh, let's read in French and German and we'll holiday in Italy. No spoilers on the film, but there is a beautiful monologue. It's from the original source material of the book, Call Me By Your Name. And it's basically a father reflecting on his life and his own experiences of love. And it is so moving and breathtaking and warm. I'm honestly tearing up just thinking about it. It's such a beautiful cinematic moment. Call Me By Your Name on Netflix right now.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah, onions are being chopped in this room currently. Yeah.

Gen Fricker:

But it's just such a beautiful moment between a father and his son. And just an acknowledgement of his son becoming a person that he is proud of and loves and understands.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

No no no no no. I think mine is in a similar vein as well. It's also a modern movie, maybe from the same time. I'm going with an actor called Josh Hamilton in the movie Eighth Grade. Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade.

Gen Fricker:

I've not seen that yet, I need to see it.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh you would love it. It's so good because it's about a young adolescent girl, about 13 years old. So it's a very awkward phase in her life. And Elsie Fisher plays the daughter, she's amazing in it, great young debut performance. And then Josh Hamilton, who's an actor who was doing everyman type thing in the nineties. I hadn't seen him for a while and he is so good in this movie as playing just a single dad who just loves his daughter so much, and just wants the best for her and is trying to inspire her, but she just finds him so annoying. Because it captures that perfect annoyance where, I have it so much now where my mom loves me more than anything in the world, and then when I get a text from her I'm like, just leave me alone, just throw my phone across the room. And just it's that thing that never leaves you, but the way that he does it. And it culminates in similar monologue where he's just like, I just think you're the coolest kid in the whole world. And you're just like, shut up, leave me alone.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

One of the things I loved most about this movie is I think it has a truly tremendous supporting cast. You've got Frankie Faison, who we know as playing Barney in Silence of the Lambs and some other great classic movies like Do the Right Thing. He's a real character that pops up in those. He plays the father in law of Kevin Hart. And alongside him is one of my all time favourite actors, great character actress, Alfre Woodard, who is in First Contact the Star Trek movie and is also in Luke Cage playing Mariah. We were talking about how this movie is just a sweet Sunday afternoon type movie. I anticipated that. But what I did not anticipate from this movie is to see truly an all timer performance from Alfre Woodard.

Gen Fricker:

We absolutely have to call out how good this performance is. Because yes, this is a Kevin Hart star vehicle, but the ensemble casting is so good. And the scene where she's talking about what her daughter was like.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

I actually did well up watching this scene. It really moved me, because you're seeing an absolute master at work. She's a master actor. She's been Oscar nominated. But I really think that this is an extension of all of the work that she's done before. But the way that she communicates to her granddaughter, her granddaughter's never met her own mother, she's in her mother's childhood bedroom, and she asks Alfre Woodard, what was my mom like? And the way Alfre Woodard plays this scene is just phenomenal acting, because she's performing to the character in the film where she is trying to hold back tears. So she's almost creating this nice sweet monologue up on the spot to not break in front of her granddaughter. And it's played just... I cannot overstate how perfectly this moment is played.

Gen Fricker:

That's it right? It's something so craftful about someone... Watching an actor embody someone who is trying to be strong. You know what I mean? The actory instinct, those big emotional moment would to be break down in a puddle and scream and cry. But the craft of showing that you feel that, but without doing it, she nails it and it's such a gut punch. It's so beautiful.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And it's not even obvious. It's not like she comes quivering close to breaking or something.

Gen Fricker:

No, it's in her eyes and just the pacing of her speech, and yeah.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

She is just phenomenal. There's a movie called Crooklyn directed by Spike Lee that's a a memoir film about his childhood. And she plays the mother in that film alongside Delroy Lindo. And I really feel like her coming into the grandmother role in this film is an evolution of the work that she was doing there. And to me, that is one of my favourite performances of all time. Her in Crooklyn is just phenomenal work. And I never really thought that I'd get a taste of that very specific thing from her again. And then it just pops up, completely surprises me in this movie. This is why I want to recommend this film this week. Because if you love seeing good acting, if you love seeing great performances from actresses that maybe did not get heralded as much as an all timer, this really is something to find. This is a bit of a discovery here in this film.

Gen Fricker:

And it'll be one of those ones where you'll see her in something else and you'll be like, oh yeah, yeah. This is the performance that will make you see her in everything.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely. He's another little one. She's Sarabi in the new Lion King. There you go. Love [inaudible 00:17:42]

Gen Fricker:

Oh, in the not live action, but action.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yes, I call it lie action.

Gen Fricker:

Why is that?

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Because it's not actually live action, but it may as well be, they're just lying to you about it.

Gen Fricker:

I call it lion action.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Okay.

Gen Fricker:

This movie also is marking this point, I think for Kevin Hart where he's moving beyond that comedic persona that we might know him from Jumanji and those kinds of comedies, Night School, where he's moving beyond that comedic persona, that standup persona that he spent so long crafting. And now we're seeing him transition to that serious actor moment. And we talk about The Sandman a lot on this podcast, but it is a well trodden path, Adam Sandler moving from his obvious comedic movies.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. Broad comedies like Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore. Big Daddy is almost a transitional movie for him.

Gen Fricker:

Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You start seeing the heart again.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Also I think when he gets more dramatic with stuff like Rain Over Me, where he is playing a grieving father and widower, it's a bit of a tradition, right? Where the big comedic actor of that era transitions from comedic work to more serious dramatic fare. Robin Williams is someone that was the most truly wild type comedian, known for a really wild and erratic, comedic persona. Then moving to sweet dramatic stuff like Good Will Hunting and winning an Oscar for it.

Gen Fricker:

Patch Adams.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Oh Patch. We love Patch.

Gen Fricker:

The best medicine is laughter. Yeah. I think it's also really interesting. I don't know if you watched Kevin Hart's documentary series that's also on Netflix called Don't F**k This Up, but it captures a moment in his career a few years ago where he is trying to build himself as a brand, as an establishment. It is very tactical for him. He's always wanted this. And I think that he pulls it off. I think he's pulling it off, becoming this serious actor.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Yeah. It's interesting. Because I think it's this and the remake of that French movie Intouchables called The Upside with him and Bryan Cranston, where Kevin Hart is now trying to broaden his horizons and become a more dynamic star.

Gen Fricker:

Yeah. I guess it speaks to as well, you just don't want to get trapped in the same box forever. You can't be dunked on by The Rock forever.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

You got to get out from under The Rock every now and then.

Gen Fricker:

The Rock's shadow is too great.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Absolutely. You see, you must do what The Rock cannot do, which is more tender fare perhaps.

Gen Fricker:

Tender movies of the heart.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Wow.

Gen Fricker:

Thank you.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Wow wow wow.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Thank you for listening to us here on The Big Film Buffet. If you like what you hear, give us five stars and remember to follow us or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from.

Gen Fricker:

This episode was hosted by Alexei Toliopoulos, and me, Gen Fricker.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

Produced by Michael Sun and Anu Hasbold.

Gen Fricker:

Edited by Geoffrey O'Connor.

Alexei Toliopoulos:

And executive produced by Tony Broderick and Melanie Mahony.