TDM: Total Dad Movies with Tooky, Dave, & Mike

Oh, this is some down-the-middle Dad manna right here.  Gene Hackman. The leading Dad face on the Dad Movie Mt. Rushmore (which, to be clear, is a virtual-only Mt. Rushmore and the Dads believe in indigenous rights); first-ballot inner circle Dad movie HOFer. Requiescat in pace. Denzel Washington. The only still-working challenger for Hackman's spot. No less than head #2 on our (virtual) Mt....

THE DADS' TEXT THREAD or A PEEK BEHIND THE CURTAIN DAD MIKE: We're gonna watch a bananas 80s movie! DAD DAVE: Great! DAD MIKE: It's a sci-fi fantasy epic! DAD DAVE: Oh yeah! DAD MIKE: It's got a soundtrack by Queen! DAD DAVE: OH SHIT THIS IS ONE OF MY ALL TIME FAVORITES- DAD MIKE: It's HIGHLANDER! DAD DAVE: oh i thought it was FLASH GOR- DAD TOOKY: Sean Connery is my real...

Hot enough for you? That's a real Dad question, isn't it? It's a question no one asks HOF Dad Jimmy Stewart in this seminal thriller. It's true there are no real Dads in this picture. But esoteric hobbies abound, and what could be more Dad than those? Photography, music composition, voyeurism - all your Dad's favorite pastimes in one sweaty package! Listen, every Dad comes...

If you told the Dads in 1984 that this film would birth a cinematic universe of interlocking properties... well, we probably would have been like "COOOL!" Your mileage might vary, but it remains surprising that this weirdly soulful story of a deepening relationship between a high school loser and his apartment complex's senior citizen handyman became one of the most durable IPs in H...

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY FROM THE DADS! We're happy to drop a special Dad's Day episode featuring the most DJPM (Dad Jokes Per Minute) of any movie we've ever covered. Join us and our pals Harpo, Chico, and Groucho as we cover all the stuff that Dads love: opera, broad ethnic stereotypes, and PUNS PUNS PUNS!  Seriously - if this isn't your Dad's favorite movie, he might not...

Listen up, brother!  This was not the first Wrestlemania. This was not the biggest Wrestlemania. This was likely not the best Wrestlemania (despite boasting an all-time HOF match between Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat). But dammit if this isn't one of the DADDEST of all Wrestlemanias: The Junkyard Dog! Rowdy Roddy Piper! Hulk Hogan! The Macho Man! Jake "The Snake"! Andre the MFing...

The shifting responsibilities of a Dad are similar to those of an artist: are we beholden to our audience/offspring? Or is our duty to our own secret compass, unknowable to all but our own secret Dad/artist heart, to become the finest version of ourselves and force the world to meet us where we exist? Spike Lee - noted Dad and enjoyer of Dad pastimes (jazz, baseball, yelling at Reggie Miller) - as...

"Is this the potato farm? "Yes. I am Albert Potato." The Dads could not think of a better way to honor the life and legacy of Val Kilmer than to review this chaotic slice of comedy pie. Come for the cheap puns, stay for the impossibly graceful comedic performance by a baby Val K in 1984's Zucker-Abrams-Zucker  Airplane!  follow-up TOP SECRET!

We've lost the great Gene Hackman, but sport is cyclical and therefore gives the illusion of permanence. And a great sports movie taps into that feeling, even while reminding us that the moments - all moments - are fleeting, at best. No wonder Dads - who believe ourselves to be both simultaneously immortal and hurtling towards the void - love a sports flick.  With apologies to Neil Diamond an...

Is there anything more Dad-coded than being uncomfortable talking to your kids about sex? (Maybe it's just me) I think this movie represents a fantasy Dad universe: one wherein all the children try to figure out sex without a Dad being forced to have a frank or uncomfortable conversation. The Dads in this movie are like the humans in FLOW, or the girl in GONE GIRL: purely theoretical.  Get on...

Happy Easter and Passover and Eid and all the rest of it from the Dads! We got you the only thing all the major religions can agree on: Moses!  (What we REALLY got you is the sexiest screen performance of all time by Yul Brenner, but don't tell your mother) It's the greatest story ever told, but does it hold up in 2025?: Enjoy our Red Sea-deep dive into Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 maste...

Vin Diesel's voice work reminds me of former Seattle Mariners' 2B Bret Boone - an excellent career but with one truly OUTSTANDING season. Vin can get you a decent action movie or even frontline your franchise. But his voice overs are his Bret-Boone-in-2001 work: Groot (from the GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY films) and the title character of this week's film. Did we cry? YOU BET YOUR ASS W...

Paul Verhoeven. Sharon Stone. Peak Arnold Schwarzenegger. And a movie that wasn't afraid to have mutants 30 years before the MCU launched. So ration your air and prepare for the Dads to implant the memory of this podcast right into your temporal lobes. Hopefully you don't get one of those schizoid embolisms from 1990's TOTAL RECALL!

Boy, they don't make 'em like this anymore, do they? This movie launched Costner, rebooted Hackman's career, and should've elevated Sean Young into the stratosphere. Alas. But if you were wondering what was going through every Gen Xers mind when they rented a prom limo, well, now you know. Keep your eyes open for Yuri and join the Dads as they trek back to 1987 for Roger Donald...

RIP to the Dad Movie GOAT, Gene Hackman. More on his incredible legacy in future episodes... Hey, the world's a tire fire, so take a little time travel trip back to 1996 when things (kinda sorta?) made sense. Or, at least, America was wrestling with widening our collective understanding of inclusivity, as opposed to (checks notes)...yeah. This movie is kind of fascinating - understandably div...

Hey friends! The Dads have been wicked busy doing Dad Shit (tm); apologies for the delay and thank you for your patience. We're hoping to get some new eps up by next week; in the meantime, sit back and enjoy an encore presentation of our discussion of the movie that launched this particular endeavor. Tune in or I swear to God I'll shoot the other Dads and dump them in a f!@#$%g swamp! [t...

IT'S NOT THE REMAKE! Do yourself a favor and read this essay before, after, or during your viewing of this movie and/or listening to this podcast: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/02/03/on-hustles/ Hanif Abdurraqib is the realest of deals, y'all. Buy all of his books and thank us later. Can you imagine an America pre-Rosie Perez? I'm glad I don't have to. Dig in as the...

Look, if you want to know why Gen X is so f#$%ed up, just know that a major studio made this movie with the thought: "This is what they want." Cage. Malkovich. Cage's hair. Cusack. Cage's accent. Trejo. Chappelle. More Cage. Ving Rhames. The guy from Star Trek: The Next Generation (not that guy, the other one). Cage shirtless. Steve Buscemi. And - did I mention - Nic Cage? THE...

If Reagan's America were a film, it'd probably be this one.  Happy New Year from your favorite Dads! This movie launched or re-launched a bunch of careers, made a bajillion dollars and has a case for the definitive movie of the 80s (for a bunch of reasons discussed herein); and YET it's still a bit of a funky rewatch. Nonetheless, we dig into the 41-year-old funk of John Landis&apos...

You know the best part of the holiday season? Hanging out with your family! OK, maybe sometimes that's not the BEST part; families are tricky little communities of biologically-linked individuals, each carrying a boatload of what NPR's Linda Holmes evocatively named "little weirdsies". Family can be a tough hang, at this or any time of year. But what if... there was a family so...

Dads love order. We like routine, a hierarchy, knowing where we stand at all times.  The Mob provides the illusion of order. This movie reveals what a life of organized crime really entails: chaos, anxiety, terror, and senseless violence. This movie is an anti-Dad instructional video, and should be required viewing for all Dads. They should have it running in the delivery and waiting rooms. There...

Bruce Lee was - for a brief period -  perhaps the most famous person in the world. He died in 1973 (at the far-too-young age of 32). Dads Mike and Dave were born in 1974, the first generation to live in a post-Bruce Lee world, and the last to have members who experienced Lee's fame and the kung fu mania that followed it firsthand.  Someday-Dad Tooky has never seen a Bruce Lee film BUT she has...

It's a TDM switcheroo - Mike & Tooky present Dad Dave with a movie that they have seen but he hasn't...until now! This movie has everything. Punching. Kicking. Chazz Palminteri punching and kicking. Vanity. William H. Macy for some reason. A knockoff Cyndi Lauper. And the only cinematic villain to approach Darth Vader in ultimate 80s badassery, Sho'nuff. It's an intergenera...

Happy Thanksgiving! Dads love the Three Fs: family, feasting, and football. So we thought it might make for a nice opportunity to watch one of the most realistic and grounded sports films ever made. Just kidding. Calling this movie "batshit crazy" does a disservice to guano. Oliver Stone and an all-star cast go full cuckoo bananas in a movie that the Dads fully recommend you boot up imme...

What's that you say? DIRTY DANCING is a Mom Movie? We are here to tell you that not only is it a Dad Movie, it is the DADDEST MOVIE. And if you disagree, you can go jump in a lake. With Patrick Swayze. And Jennifer Grey. Which sounds cold. But hella sexy.  This movie rules and if you have kids and don't cry watching Jerry Orbach do Jerry Orbach things, I don't want to know from you....