Maybe Baby Needs to Be in a Corner

12 classic movies reconsidered since I've become a dad

Becoming a parent changes the way you look at the world. And that includes movies. Cinema is filtered through a different lens now: the Daddy lens.

Before I became a father, I adored The Godfather. But now all I can see are a bunch of sons who make a mess of things because they didn’t listen to their dad. I mean seriously, didn’t Vito say something about a man needing to spend time with his family to be a real man? And you interpret that as “I should kill my brother on a fishing boat ‘cause he hurt my feelings”?

Here are the plot summaries of 12 beloved movies, reinterpreted from my Dad perspective.

Say Anything (1989)

A father gets annoyed because a teenage boy in a trenchcoat wants to bang his daughter in the backseat of a car. The dad isn’t perfect, admittedly. He’s got some tax evasion problems. But you know what he does when his life goes to shit? He sits fully-clothed in a bathtub and has an emotional breakdown in private, and then he goes to prison and serves his time like a man. You know what a man doesn’t do? He doesn’t trespass on somebody’s property with a boombox because he’s sad he can’t bang the homeowner’s daughter in the backseat of a car.

Finding Nemo (2003)

A movie that would have been entirely unnecessary if Nemo had just listened to his father. Is that so hard? No, I’m seriously asking. I know Nemo’s dad eventually found him and both of them had memorable adventures and made some new friends along the way and it all turned out okay. But you know how many clownfish who don’t listen to their dads and get lost have unhappy endings? Most of them. They’re in the mall, and their dad says “Just stay where I can see you, okay?,” and he turns his back for one freaking second and the clownfish kid is gone, and that’s it, it’s over, Daddy never finds him, because the kid wandered off with some sharks who aren't as nice as vegetarian movie sharks, and they’ve got a van with all the windows blacked out, and now Nemo’s buried in a forest preserve somewhere and Nemo’s dad has to live with that for the rest of his goddamn life.

Carrie (1976)

A mom tries to raise a special-needs child, and she makes some mistakes. Yes, she’s a little overprotective, but who isn’t? The closet was maybe a bit much, but who among us isn’t guilty of occasional helicopter parenting? Her daughter Carrie ignores her and goes to the school dance anyway and a bucket of blood is dumped on her head, proving yet again that public schools are the worst.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

A boy named Charlie gets a golden ticket to take a tour of a local chocolate factory, and doesn’t even consider taking his mother, a single working woman (either a widow or divorced, we’re never sure) who slaves tirelessly to keep a roof over her family’s head. No, he picks his bedridden grandpa instead, because why reward the woman who literally gave birth to him and is the only one bringing in an income? Fuck her.

He’s joined on the tour by a gaggle of children, all of whom are horrible and nasty little shits, which of course is entirely their parents fault. In the same way kids aren’t born racist, it’s a behavior nurtured in them by their racist asshole parents, Veruca Salt wasn’t born a spoiled twat who refuses to take no for an answer. But who ends up sucked down a garbage chute? Not Mr. Salt, the rich prick daddy who couldn’t care less about all the psychological abuse he’s inflicting on his daughter. It’s the kids who almost drown in chocolate rivers and have their bodies horribly deformed, and the parents just get upset and threaten lawsuits but otherwise experience no discomfort. Nothing changes, because the childless and sadistic Willy Wonka is clueless about parent-child dynamics. He’s treating the symptom, not the disease, because he’s an idiot who makes chocolate bars in a factory run by Oompa Loompa slaves.

Wonka gives his factory to Charlie, the suck-up who didn’t misbehave in clear sight — which, if you’ve ever hosted a playdate, you know is the motherfucker you need to keep your eye on — and nobody asks about the mom, because again, fuck her and her “I’ll carry the financial burden for the entire family, you go enjoy your chocolate tour” benevolence, or the MIA (and likely dead) Dad, who Charlie either never loved or has erased from his memory completely.

Dirty Dancing (1987)

A resort dance instructor tries to scold a father by telling him, “Nobody puts baby in the corner!” Well maybe the corner is the only place where minimum wage-earning assholes in tight pants won’t keep trying to fuck his daughter!

Moana (2016)

A Polynesian chief asks his underage daughter not to go beyond the reef because it’s dangerous and she could die, so of course she does it anyway, and she even steals one of the ships he specifically put in the secret garage cause he knew she’d try some bullshit like this. So fine, what’s done is done. But then the rest of the movie happens, and she doesn’t even try to contact her dad just to let him know she’s okay. He probably doesn’t want to hear the part about giving a ride to some shirtless dude with too many tats, but at least a text with an “I’m okay” or even a thumbs-up emoji so his insides aren’t a complete wreck.

She does finally come home, and she’s not hurt and she may have saved the island’s ecosystem, but that’s not the point!

Knocked Up (2007)

A guy gets somebody pregnant and now he wants Dad’s advice. I see how it is. Let me guess, they’re going to talk for two minutes in a diner, the dad gets a few words of wisdom in while nobody eats their sandwiches, and then we never hear from him again, at least until the new parents need a loan. I wonder if Seth Rogen’s character spends more time thoughtfully considering the advice from the guys he gets stoned with. Spoiler alert: He totally does!

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

A dad wants his son to visit, because maybe he’ll be interested in what his old man does for a living. No, no, fine, he gets it, Luke has his own ideas of what he’s going to do with his life. Nobody said he had to join the family business, but Darth was hoping they could at least talk about it, maybe give his side of the story. The last time they saw each other, Luke showed up at his dad’s office with some old hippie dude—that’s your business, but following a strange bearded man into a vehicle because he’s promised to teach you about the “Force” is every dad’s nightmare—and then took his sister out of time-out, which completely negated Darth’s authority as a parent.

Now he gets a second chance to make things right, and Luke has a complete meltdown, like a hangry kid in the middle of Target. Did Darth want to cut off his hand? Of course not. No parent does. But good Lord, stop with the “Noooooooooooooo” or I’ll give you something to cry about!

Risky Business (1983)

Two parents somehow manage to raise a son who grows up to become a sexually mature adult who believes that the single most outrageous form of personal rebellion and bad-boy behavior is dancing to a Bob Seger song while wearing a pink button-down shirt and tighty-whities.

The Shining (1980)

A struggling author gets frustrated by his crappy day job and takes it out on his family. He tries to murder everybody, which admittedly isn’t the best conflict resolution. But have you ever experienced the grating sound of a Big Wheel tricycle going back and forth and back and forth and back and fucking forth on hotel carpeting for hours on end? I want to murder somebody just imagining it. 

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

A father works tirelessly his whole life, putting in late hours at the office when he’d probably rather be home, getting passed over for promotions time and time again, but he never stops believing in himself, and after years of sacrifice and hard work, he finally moves up the corporate ladder and starts making a salary where he can move his family out of their tiny two bedroom apartment and into the kind of spacious house he and his wife used to daydream about back when they were still paying off student loans. They’ve got a nest egg now, enough to make sure their son Cameron will never want for anything. The guy decides to reward himself, and splurges on a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder. It’s an absurd and unnecessary extravagance, and he’s afraid to even drive the damn thing, but just knowing it's sitting there in his garage gives him a pang of self-confidence. He earned that. All those thankless hours at his desk, away from his family, they weren’t in vain. They meant something. But then his son and his little bitch friend Ferris steals his Ferrari and destroys it, because they wanted to skip school and go see a baseball game or something. 

Footloose (1984)

A town thinks the local pastor wants to ban dancing, but really he just wants to ban guys with stupid haircuts from grinding on his daughter. So I guess that makes him the fucking bad guy!