Dads

The documentary talks to fathers from all over the world. Some are known names: Judd Apatow, Jimmy Fallon, Neil Patrick Harris, Ken Jeong. Some are people nobody knows, ordinary fathers raising children in different countries. What they describe runs from sleep schedules and changing nappies to leaving a job and to settling accounts with their own fathers. Bryce Dallas Howard directed it, her first documentary. Her own father, Ron Howard, is among those speaking, and that explains why the thing was made. It is eighty-one minutes long and its tone is warm throughout; it touches the hard parts without going deep, and it criticises no father. So it is not an argument about the subject but a series of portraits. Where it is actually strong is not the famous names but what the fathers raising children on their own have to say.