Dads review – schmaltzy but heartwarming ode to modern parenting

It’s not often a good sign when a film opens with “a Dove For Men and Unilever Production,” but such is the corporate synergy at play in Bryce Dallas Howard’s Apple TV+ documentary Dads. It immediately gives the feeling that you’re about to watch one of those schmaltzy “we care about you” ads, only stretched out to feature length, and Dads does sometimes stoop to this level. In its best moments, though, it’s something more affecting and honest.

The rules of fatherhood have changed dramatically in the last couple of decades, and Howard has assembled a cast of dads (some celebrity, some ‘normal’) to talk through their experiences of raising their kids. Though the big names – Will Smith, Conan O’Brien, Jimmys Kimmel and Fallon – are the obvious draw, it’s the regular folk who prove most compelling, whether it’s a Brazilian dad tackling his country’s culture of toxic masculinity or a father whose world was turned upside down by his baby’s illness.

Part of this is down to the presentation – the celebs are in a studio speaking directly to camera, whilst the normals use footage from their chaotic, child-filled homes – but it’s also the struggles of the non-celebs feeling that much more “real.” These dads have to balance money struggles and everyday time constraints in a way that Hollywood superstars simply don’t, and their perseverance through the bad times makes the good times more emotionally resonant.

In Dads, the good times certainly outnumber the bad. It wants you to come away jolly and feeling like parenting isn’t actually impossible, and that you’re not alone when it all gets too much. It’s hardly groundbreaking stuff, but when it goes for the heartstrings, it's hard to resist.

Dads is now streaming on Apple TV+.