It makes sense that the 1989 film Parenthood was eventually adapted for television, and that the show became such a remarkable success. The movie’s premise is remarkably simple: What if you were a parent just trying to make ends meet? What allowed the show to really work, though, was first unlocked by the movie. Both have a remarkably sentimental, saccharine quality that, when all is said and done, feels fairly profound.
Thirty-five years later, Parenthood should feel like a relic of an era when families were more “traditional,” a tribute to a kind of American life that maybe never really existed. Instead, though, the movie plays like a lovely tribute to the mundanity and profundity of being a parent. It’s something that many people do, but will change your life whether you want it to or not.
The movie tells the story of Gil Buckman (Steve Martin) and his three siblings as they all deal with parenting difficulties of one sort or another. One of his sisters is dealing with a rebellious teenage daughter while the other is trying to have more children. His younger brother, meanwhile, has just discovered that he’s a father and is struggling to deal with that revelation. Here are five reasons the movie is worth checking out or revisiting:
It features one of the great Steve Martin performances
Steve Martin has long been regarded as one of the great comedians of his or any era, but his career as a leading man proved that he was a fairly flexible star. And Martin’s Gil is not an exceptionally funny man, although he does have his moments.
Martin is playing an insecure father who is worried that his children’s flaws reflect badly on his parenting, and worrying about whatever trouble his siblings are getting into. Martin has never been bad at playing a put-upon man, but here, his various problems feel utterly relatable, and Martin never overplays the low-key insanity that is constantly buzzing through his life.
It’s brutally honest about the pain of parenthood
Perhaps the most profound thing that Parenthood has to say about, well, parenthood, is that the children we bring into this world are ultimately full-fledged people in their own right. Parents can try to steer them toward certain things, but there are simply no guarantees.
Of course, Parenthood also delights in showcasing the day-to-day stress of being a parent, knowing that you’re responsible for another human being and feeling confident that you don’t even have control of yourself. At the same time, the movie acknowledges the special magic that can come from that responsibility, and from loving someone else more than yourself.
It manages its tone perfectly
With Steve Martin as the star, you’d be forgiven for expecting Parenthood to be a straight-up comedy, but Parenthood is balancing a much more grounded tone than that. While ridiculous things do happen, they never feel like the kinds of things that never happen in real life.
Instead, Parenthood is careful to keep both of its feet planted firmly in a world that closely resembles our own, which means that both the comedy and the drama aren’t as world-shattering as they might be in a more bombastic movie. That effortless movement between comedy and drama is more difficult to balance than you might expect, and it’s part of the reason the movie always feels true to life. All credit goes to director Ron Howard for managing that balance.
It’s multigenerational in a way that works
Although the primary focus of Parenthood is the trials of four middle-aged parents trying to figure out how to deal with their kids, the movie’s title also applies to these siblings’ relationship to their own parents. Jason Robards, who plays their father, is particularly crucial here, reminding us that parenting does not end when a child has children of their own.
It’s called Parenthood, but this is also a movie about what it means to be a family, to love the people connected to you by blood for no reason other than that you should. Is it a little bit sweet? For sure, but it also feels entirely justified by the slew of great performers in the movie’s cast.
It packs a lot into a concise running time
There’s a reason the Parenthood show ran for a full six seasons. It’s easy to spin pretty massive stories out of the simple dynamics in a relatively large family, but Parenthood the movie manages to get a lot of that into a relatively short running time.
There are interesting developments for each of the four siblings, and while not everything is resolved with thudding finality, that feels true to the lives of these characters. They’ll have to go on loving and living with one another, and all this movie does is provide us a brief window into their lives during a particularly pivotal couple of weeks. Life will go on, even if we stop watching.
Parenthood is streaming on Max.
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