Dads

"Dads" is so earnest and likable that you might feel bad for not loving it more. A celebration of fatherhood and the changing role of men, it's directed by Bryce Dallas Howard, and costars her father, actor-director Ron Howard, plus at least a dozen other famous showbiz dads, including Will Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Patton Oswalt, and seemingly every major American late night TV host save for CBS' Stephen Colbert. The celebrity dads hold forth on what it's like to deal with a crying kid or clean up poop or worry about their kids' health and safety. A lot of this is figuratively and literally standup material, with the interview subjects framed head-to-toe in front of bright, primary-colored backdrops, and keeping things as light as possible. 

The film also includes short profiles, in the manner of a heartstring-tugging TV newsmagazine, of fathers who at first read as "regular folks," but turn out to be media stars who have transformed the narrative of their own fatherhood into a source of income as well as public inspiration. These include the founder of Brazil's Paizinho, a resource for dads that led to the site's founder reuniting with his own father, a non-presence in his life for decades; and Bob Scheer, who overcame an abusive childhood to become a foster parent to four kids, and found a nonprofit that gives free supplies to foster children so that they won't have to carry their belongings in a trash bag, as Scheer did when he was their age. 

As typified by Scheer's story, "Dads" is largely devoid of unpleasantness that doesn't end by reassuring us that the person telling the story overcame the bad times. ABC's Jimmy Kimmel briefly alludes to the agony of nearly losing his newborn son to a heart defect, and physician turned actor-comedian Ken Jeong gets a few sentences about his wife's breast cancer, the subject of an entire standup special elsewhere. It can be frustrating to watch the documentary skip across the rough parts, including acknowledgments that some of these dads were driven to be better fathers because their own fathers were absent or inadequate. 

But that approach seems baked into the mission statement of "Dads," essentially an advertisement for modern, evolved fatherhood, co-produced by Dove, one of the world's largest soap manufacturers (which says it's making donations to the global fatherhood nonprofit Men+Care in conjunction with the movie). "Dads" was released on Apple TV two days before Father's Day, and is pretty clearly intended something for extended families to watch together after a cookout where dad or grandad presides over the grill. Anything that might ruin the mood ends up in the film's rearview mirror quickly. The editing, by Andrew Morreale, jams caught-on-video slapstick and wry observations together with rapid-fire, reality TV-style cutting, then slows down a hair when the sad parts arrive. Composer Sami Jano italicizes moods to make sure you feel what you're supposed feel at any given moment.