It’s almost never a good sign when a studio holds the review embargo for a movie until the day of release, especially after already delaying it by a few months. More often than not, it’s a sign they know exactly what they have on their hands. Sadly for TriStar’s latest release, The Breadwinner, those fears prove entirely justified as it cements itself as a painfully unfunny family comedy that misses the mark at almost every turn.

The Breadwinner follows Nate Wilcox (Nate Bargatze), a stellar car salesman and the breadwinner of the Wilcox family, while stay at home mum Katie (Mandy Moore) ensures family life runs as smoothly as possible, carrying out all the unsung heroic work that mums do for their three children. That is until Katie is offered the chance of a lifetime when Shark Tank gives her $100,000 to turn her dream invention into a reality and potentially become a household essential like the Scrub Daddy. The news effectively flips their lives upside down and now Nate has to become a stay at home dad and make sure the wheels of the Wilcox family keep turning. Inevitably, that’s easier said than done.

It’s a premise that is familiar and, when done right, can actually be rather enjoyable. Just look at films like Daddy’s Home and Cheaper by the Dozen. Yet somehow, inexplicably, The Breadwinner completely fumbles it despite so obviously recycling the same structures and character arcs we’ve seen before. The difference this time is that it forgets to include any actual jokes, replacing them with painfully bad ones instead.

That wouldn’t be much of a surprise if it wasn’t for Bargatze being the leading star here. He is an extremely successful stand-up comedian who has proven time and time again that he is capable of making people laugh, so it begs the question: what exactly went wrong here? Especially when you factor in the fact that Bargatze himself was a co-writer, this may have to go down as one of those occasions where he completely misplaced his funny bone.

Will Forte, shoehorned in as a handyman at the Wilcox home, is the epitome of the film itself. Whenever he’s on screen, he’s trying so incredibly hard to get a laugh that it actually becomes uncomfortable to watch. Experiencing The Breadwinner with a general audience was arguably the most entertaining part of the whole thing because, for the vast majority of the runtime, you could hear a pin drop as gag after gag failed to land with anyone in attendance.

Of course, the problems don’t stop with the comedy. There’s behaviour that borders on child neglect as Nate, rather than stepping up as a father, repeatedly palms his children off onto Forte’s random handyman character. Every cliché imaginable is ticked off as though the script is working from a checklist. There’s the suburban mums’ club whose sole purpose seems to be gossiping and talking about make-up, alongside the stay at home dad who is treated as somehow less of a man because his wife earns enough money for both of them. It all feels wildly outdated and, ultimately, extremely awkward.

So it goes without saying The Breadwinner is definitely one to avoid this weekend. Spending 100 minutes watching paint dry would probably be a much more rewarding and better way to spend your time.