Jason Lee stars as Dave, a fatherly figure, in Alvin and the Chipmunks.
This holiday season, it’s clear that studios are turning the chick-flick/tearjerker concept on its ear by featuring the newest lovable breed of protagonist — the single dad. In the last three months of this year, at least five films feature a guy who must face the rigors of child-rearing without his better half (or at least until he finds one).
“So many single dad movies are at theaters now that you wonder if the male studio execs wish they didn’t have wives to worry about,” jokes one Hollywood insider.
The trend started inauspiciously enough with this past summer’s I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, with Kevin James’ Larry as a firefighter widower pretending to take on Adam Sandler’s Chuck as a domestic partner in order to ensure his two kids get his pension. Then there’s “Quienes es Mas Macho?” man Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who plays (shocking) a football player in The Game Plan, to ultimate sensitive guy John Cusack, who goes to the well twice, with last month’s quirky comedy Martian Child and this month’s heart-wrenching drama Grace is Gone (now playing in theaters).
Like everything else, Hollywood has about a half-dozen formulas it uses to deal with the species known as “Man Solo.”
1. Father Knows Best
Recent Example: Steve Carell in Dan in Real Life
Most movie dads are wise, responsible and all-knowing. Nobody played this role better than Gregory Peck, who won an Oscar as the child-rearing, prejudice-fighting, rabid dog-shooting Atticus Finch in 1962’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Less noble but no less well-meaning is Steve Carell in this year’s Dan in Real Life. Aside from longing for his brother’s girlfriend and getting speeding tickets in Rhode Island (quite a feat when you’re driving a Benz diesel station wagon), Dan seems to always be trying to do the right thing, to the point where the audience may start begging him to go on a bender in Vegas.
Fatherly Advice: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” – Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Conflicted Dad
Recent Example: Patrick Dempsey in Enchanted
While the fathers who know best live in a world of black and white, good and evil, these dads appeal to the realists in all of us by living in the eternal grey area of indecision and conflict. Currently, Dempsey, as Enchanted’s single dad Robert Philip, can’t figure out whether to stay with his fiancée Nancy or pursue the McFantasy of Amy Adams’ curvaceous princess Giselle. He only knows it’s a bad idea to break out into song in the middle of Central Park. Only slightly less distracted is John Mahoney in 1989’s Say Anything, in which Mahoney’s James Court wants to give his daughter a better life while stealing money from old folks and dodging the IRS.
Fatherly Advice: “How do you know she’s a real princess?” – Dempsey to his daughter in Enchanted
3. Papa Slob
Recent Example: Jason Lee in Alvin and the Chipmunks (not their dad, but close enough)
Looking for a story about a man who can’t be bothered to handle his own hygiene, let alone his kids’? Look no further. Papa Slobs might be Slacker Slobs, typified by Adam Sandler in 1999’s Big Daddy, is a modern-day Peter Pan, the boy who refuses to grow up, or get out of the La-Z-Boy. In this case, he decides to adopt a 5-year-old to impress his girl. Or there’s the more complicated Misunderstood Mess, immortalized by Walter Matthau in his 1976 turn as beer-swilling baseball coach Morris Buttermaker in The Bad News Bears. Buttermaker was so morally depraved that he reconnected with his stepdaughter Amanda (memorably played by Tatum O’Neal) for the sole purpose of pitching her until her arm falls off, then threw a beer can at her when she said she wanted some quality time with him. Nice!
Fatherly Advice: “This quitting thing – it’s a hard habit to break once you start.” – Walter Matthau in The Bad News Bears
4. Dad in Distress
Recent Example: John Cusack in Grace is Gone
Everyone roots for the underdog, and fewer are more reliable than the Dad in Distress. Grace is Gone’s Cusack and The Pursuit of Happyness’s Will Smith follow some heavies in this category. Robin Williams goes drag in 1993’s Mrs. Doubtfire to spend more time with his three kids. And who can forget Dustin Hoffman as Ted Kramer in 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer, holding his son and sprinting through the streets of Manhattan in sheer terror after the kid bonks his head on the monkey bars? On the action side, there’s Live Free or Die Hard’s world-weary Bruce Willis, who stops at nothing to rescue his estranged daughter who’s been kidnapped by baddies. Who wouldn’t want a dad who can take multiple beat-downs while saving the free world from disaster?
Fatherly Advice: “We’re gonna be okay. Come on, let’s go get some ice cream.” – Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs. Kramer
5. Fantasy Father
Recent Example: John Cusack in Martian Child
Only in Hollywood could guys like these be prepared for the rigors of fatherhood. In this year’s Martian Child, Cusack’s widowed David Gordon steps away from his science-fiction writing and self obsessions to adopt a six-year-old short-bus traveler Dennis, who thinks he is a space alien who can’t get too close to the sun and only eats Lucky Charms. The only screen father that may seem less realistic is Tom Hanks’s well-meaning but dim Forrest Gump.
Fatherly Advice: “I don’t want to bring another kid into this world. But how do you argue against loving one that’s already here?” – John Cusack in Martian Child
6. Playboy Pop
Recent Example: The Rock in The Game Plan
Can a movie portray a guy whose commitment to raising his child right is only matched by his commitment to keeping his manhood alive and his abs rock hard? Yes, if it stars the Playboy Pop, whose most recent incarnation was Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as super manly quarterback Joe Kingman in The Game Plan. In it, The Rock finds out he has a Pebble in the form of 8-year-old girl Peyton. Surprisingly, The Rock’s forbearer may actually be Dustin Hoffman’s Ted Kramer, who manages to shag a young JoBeth Williams and smooch one-time Playboy Playmate Ingeborg Sorenson in a short 105 minutes. Hey, it won the man an Oscar.
Fatherly Advice: “You don’t get abs like these eating peanut butter patties.” – The Rock in The Game Plan
While most of these films may have given these single dads what they wanted, be it quality time with the kids, studly standing among fellow jocks or the new love of his life, we enjoy our movie dads in all incarnations.
Danny King is a former reporter for Bloomberg, whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.
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