Mr. Mom sets up so many comedy patterns for the 80s.
Michael Keaton: Born in Pittsburgh - Kennedy Township or McKee's Rocks - and starting his career on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, Keaton went to LA and his first big role was Night Shift, which led to this movie. His character in his early films is often a very Bill Murray smart everyman who deals with life's pains before being smart enough to come out on top, a role he would play in Gung Ho - made close to home in Beaver, PA - and Johnny Dangerously. By Beetlejuice and Batman, he was as big a star as it gets. He's a rare star in that even though his career has had ebbs and flows, he's always been great in everything he's made and comes off as, well, a Yinzer. Someone you'd like to have an Iron with. He's playing that character he's known for here, a smart guy whom life has treated badly named Jack Butler. He's lost his auto job and is now the stay-at-home dad while his wife works.
Teri Garr: I wonder if Keaton and Garr ever got into silly Pittsburgh versus Cleveland spats; she's from Lakewood. Trained in ballet and a student of Lee Strasberg, her career has vacillated between comedy - Young Frankenstein, Tootsie - and drama - The Conversation, One from the Heart, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I always think of her as the mom who is way funnier than she should be, probably because this movie is what I knew her from. Her Caroline is intelligent, capable and more than a match for anyone in the movie.
Martin Mull: It's difficult to explain to young folks the impact and strangeness of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and the spin-off Fernwood 2 Night. Soap operas were all normal, straight affairs before that show and the fact that a supposedly legitimate talk show from the setting of that show could exist on its own outside of the show is even stranger. By this point in his career, Mull was often the smarmy bad guy, a role he would play in Take This Job and Shove It, Cutting Class, Ski Patrol and so many more.
Important friends: This film follows what would be an 80s staple. Often, the friends and small roles are just as funny as the main characters, like Christopher Lloyd as fellow unemployed car worker Larry, Edie McClurg as a check-out lady (McClurg's career is filled with memorable small roles), Ann Jillian as flirty mom Joan (as an 11-year-old boy, I had no idea what I was feeling when I saw Ann Jillian, but I knew she didn't look like any other woman I knew) and another Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman actor Graham Jarvis.
John Hughes: Story editor and producer Lauren Shuler read a John Hughes article in National Lampoon which caused her to become friends with him. A story he told her about taking care of his kids made her laugh; could it be a movie? They finished the script together, but the fact that Hughes lived in Chicago and not Hollywood led to Universal firing him and bringing in TV writers to redo the script. Shuler always claimed that the original script was a lot funnier.
Don't feel bad for Hughes. He's already sold National Lampoon's Class Reunion and National Lampoon's Vacation. This movie got him a three-picture deal and he made Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science in just two years. By the 90s, he moved back to Chicago and died too young at 59. If you were alive in the 80s, his comedy shaped so much of what you watched, from the popular teen comedies to secretly anarchic movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Vacation.
The idea for this is simple. Jack loses his job, his wife is smarter than him and becomes a success in advertising (a field Hughes knew well, he had created the Edge Credit Card Shaving Test ads) while he stays home all day doing what she used to do. Where it works is the creativity of director Stan Dragoti (Love At First Bite), cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (The Hospital, Eyes of Laura Mars, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure) and Keaton, who is beyond likable and never gets to be too much like other stars would be in such a high energy role.
Where this movie is ahead of its time is that Caroline still gets the career that she wants. The movie ends seeing her commercial on TV and her getting more money and more respect from her boss.
If anything, Mr. Mom has given us this dialogue, which is as funny today as it was in forty years ago.
Jack: No problem. Come on over here Ron. Let me show you what I'm doing, taking advantage of some of the time off. To, uh, add a whole new wing on here. Gonna rip these walls out and, uh, of course re-wire it.
Ron: Yeah, you gonna make it all 220?
Jack: Yeah, 220, 221. Whatever it takes.
Michael Keaton: Born in Pittsburgh - Kennedy Township or McKee's Rocks - and starting his career on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood, Keaton went to LA and his first big role was Night Shift, which led to this movie. His character in his early films is often a very Bill Murray smart everyman who deals with life's pains before being smart enough to come out on top, a role he would play in Gung Ho - made close to home in Beaver, PA - and Johnny Dangerously. By Beetlejuice and Batman, he was as big a star as it gets. He's a rare star in that even though his career has had ebbs and flows, he's always been great in everything he's made and comes off as, well, a Yinzer. Someone you'd like to have an Iron with. He's playing that character he's known for here, a smart guy whom life has treated badly named Jack Butler. He's lost his auto job and is now the stay-at-home dad while his wife works.
Teri Garr: I wonder if Keaton and Garr ever got into silly Pittsburgh versus Cleveland spats; she's from Lakewood. Trained in ballet and a student of Lee Strasberg, her career has vacillated between comedy - Young Frankenstein, Tootsie - and drama - The Conversation, One from the Heart, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I always think of her as the mom who is way funnier than she should be, probably because this movie is what I knew her from. Her Caroline is intelligent, capable and more than a match for anyone in the movie.
Martin Mull: It's difficult to explain to young folks the impact and strangeness of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman and the spin-off Fernwood 2 Night. Soap operas were all normal, straight affairs before that show and the fact that a supposedly legitimate talk show from the setting of that show could exist on its own outside of the show is even stranger. By this point in his career, Mull was often the smarmy bad guy, a role he would play in Take This Job and Shove It, Cutting Class, Ski Patrol and so many more.
Important friends: This film follows what would be an 80s staple. Often, the friends and small roles are just as funny as the main characters, like Christopher Lloyd as fellow unemployed car worker Larry, Edie McClurg as a check-out lady (McClurg's career is filled with memorable small roles), Ann Jillian as flirty mom Joan (as an 11-year-old boy, I had no idea what I was feeling when I saw Ann Jillian, but I knew she didn't look like any other woman I knew) and another Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman actor Graham Jarvis.
John Hughes: Story editor and producer Lauren Shuler read a John Hughes article in National Lampoon which caused her to become friends with him. A story he told her about taking care of his kids made her laugh; could it be a movie? They finished the script together, but the fact that Hughes lived in Chicago and not Hollywood led to Universal firing him and bringing in TV writers to redo the script. Shuler always claimed that the original script was a lot funnier.
Don't feel bad for Hughes. He's already sold National Lampoon's Class Reunion and National Lampoon's Vacation. This movie got him a three-picture deal and he made Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science in just two years. By the 90s, he moved back to Chicago and died too young at 59. If you were alive in the 80s, his comedy shaped so much of what you watched, from the popular teen comedies to secretly anarchic movies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Vacation.
The idea for this is simple. Jack loses his job, his wife is smarter than him and becomes a success in advertising (a field Hughes knew well, he had created the Edge Credit Card Shaving Test ads) while he stays home all day doing what she used to do. Where it works is the creativity of director Stan Dragoti (Love At First Bite), cinematographer Victor J. Kemper (The Hospital, Eyes of Laura Mars, The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure) and Keaton, who is beyond likable and never gets to be too much like other stars would be in such a high energy role.
Where this movie is ahead of its time is that Caroline still gets the career that she wants. The movie ends seeing her commercial on TV and her getting more money and more respect from her boss.
If anything, Mr. Mom has given us this dialogue, which is as funny today as it was in forty years ago.
Jack: No problem. Come on over here Ron. Let me show you what I'm doing, taking advantage of some of the time off. To, uh, add a whole new wing on here. Gonna rip these walls out and, uh, of course re-wire it.
Ron: Yeah, you gonna make it all 220?
Jack: Yeah, 220, 221. Whatever it takes.