Writing Prompt – What’s the last movie you saw and how would you make it better?
This is an easy one – Fatherhood, with Kevin Hart, and I’d improve it by not killing off the wife in the first act.
Aside from the fact that it’s been done a thousand times, I kind of shook my head when it played out on the screen because I was expecting a solid comedy with Kevin Hart and this plot device just made it way too sad too quick. Plus, as a father myself, there are plenty of wacky fatherhood scenarios that the movie could’ve played out without him needing to be a single Dad. Or if you want him to explore that helplessness anyways, make the wife a career woman and put him in the stay at home Dad role.
It just really set the movie off on the wrong foot for me, which admittedly was already going kind of slow, to have that traumatic scene, and the funeral, and everyone gathered at the house, and then all of the pressure from his mother-in-law about them wanting to take the baby home with them?!
Maybe it wasn’t meant to be nothing but laughs like his other movies, but I was definitely looking for something lighthearted and funny that night so to be hit with more of a drama was a little disappointing.