“The Breadwinner” key art featuring Nate Bargatze.
Sony Pictures Entertainment
The Breadwinner, a family comedy starring stand-up comedian Nate Bargatze in his feature film debut, is being met with some not-so-fresh-reviews from Rotten Tomatoes critics.
Written by Bargatze and directed by Eric Appel (Die Hart, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story), The Breadwinner plays in preview screenings on Thursday before opening in theaters nationwide on Friday.
Bargatze stars as Nate Wilcox, a successful salesman who stumbles into a chaotic life as a stay-at-home dad to three daughters after his wife, Katie (Mandy Moore), lands a life-changing deal on Shark Tank to put her household invention into play.
Rated PG, The Breadwinner also stars Colin Jost, Zach Cherry, Martin Herlihy, Kate Berlant, Kumail Nanjiani and Will Forte.
While the review embargo has lifted on The Breadwinner, the film has not yet been assigned a critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, even though nine reviews have been listed on the site. The Breadwinner’s Critics Consensus, Audience Summary and Popcornmeter score are also still pending.
Note: This article will be updated when RT assigns a critics’ score and more reviews are posted.
What Are Individual Critics Saying About ‘The Breadwinner’?
William Bibbiani of The Wrap is among the top critics on RT who gives the film a “rotten” score, writing that “The Breadwinner has more stale corny bits than a Kellogg’s factory dumpster.”
Natalia Winkelman of Variety also gives The Breadwinner a “rotten” score. Winkelman writes in her RT review summary, “Select moments may land a laugh, but zoom out a little, and the real joke is that this movie was made in 2026.”
Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter also slams the film, writing in his “rotten” RT review summary, “The Breadwinner is so lazy and laid-back that it practically recedes into itself. This is a film that makes television shows like Father Knows Best and My Three Sons seem edgy.”
The Breadwinner doesn’t find any mercy from AV Club’s Matt Schimkowitz, either. Schimkowitz writes in his “rotten” RT review summary, “Bargatze’s commitment to ‘clean’ comedy, which is to say, material that is inoffensive to white upper-class suburbanites, means defanging whatever bite Breadwinner might otherwise have.”
As of the publication of this article, the only “fresh” review of the film on RT comes from Alison Foreman of IndieWire, who writes, “For the most part, Appel wisely avoids pushing Nate toward overly heightened emotional territory — instead, treating Bargatze’s deadpan confusion like its own immutable law of physics inside the silly world of The Breadwinner.”
The Breadwinner plays in Thursday previews before opening in theaters nationwide on Friday.