Father There Is Only One (2019)
Directed by Santiago Segura
No — Father There Is Only One is not woke, scoring 4 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
There is a long and honorable tradition of the domestic farce, in which a competent woman briefly absents herself and a blustering man discovers that children require feeding.
Consciousness Markers
The premise touches on a father's obliviousness to domestic labor, but the film resolves into a warm reaffirmation of the traditional nuclear family rather than any feminist critique.
A Spanish-language family comedy with a predominantly white Spanish cast; no deliberate diversity casting or commentary on representation.
A broad slapstick family comedy with no preachy or didactic messaging; it aims to entertain rather than lecture.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext whatsoever.
No engagement with race or racial politics; the story is a domestic family farce.
No environmental or climate themes present.
No economic critique or anti-capitalist messaging; the family is comfortably middle-class and the film is apolitical.
No body positivity themes or messaging about body image.
No neurodivergent characters or themes.
No historical revisionism; it is a contemporary domestic comedy.
Why it received this score
There is a long and honorable tradition of the domestic farce, in which a competent woman briefly absents herself and a blustering man discovers that children require feeding. Father There Is Only One arrives from Spain in 2019 to uphold this tradition with a cast of six uniformly white performers, five children, and a great deal of shouting. Santiago Segura directs and stars as Javier, a husband who dispenses advice about household management while performing none of it. The film views this arrangement as a joke to be enjoyed, not a grievance to be aired, and it is careful to restore order by the final reel. The nuclear family survives. Everyone learns something small. The kitchen does not.
On the matter of social consciousness, the film is a near-total void. There are no racial politics, no environmental sermons, no economic critique. The family is comfortable, the problems are logistical, and the resolution is a hug. The premise gestures faintly at the unequal division of domestic labor, which is the closest the film comes to a thesis, but it treats the insight as a setup for slapstick and then quietly retires it. The wife returns. The husband has grown marginally. The audience is not asked to reconsider anything.
What remains is a broad, cheerful comedy that wants nothing more than to make families laugh on a Sunday afternoon. It succeeded commercially, becoming the highest-grossing Spanish film of its year and spawning four sequels, which is its own kind of cultural statement. The film is not preachy. It is not angry. It is, by the standards of the current moment, almost aggressively untroubled, a relic of an era when a man failing to operate a washing machine was sufficient comic material and no one felt compelled to append a lesson.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Part of
Synopsis
Javier is what we have dubbed as a "husband-in-law." That is that without taking care of the care of the house and children at all, he knows exactly what needs to be done, and that he continuously collects a sum of sentences from the type: "It is that you do not organize", or "do not get nervous", you already consider that overflowing woman drowns in a glass of water. Javier will have to face the reality of dealing with five children (between four and twelve years old) when his wife decides to go on a trip and leave him alone with them. The chaotic situation that takes place at home will progressively evolve ecologically to the most absolute disaster, but at the same time it will give parents and children the opportunity to meet and enjoy themselves for the first time.
Questions about Father There Is Only One
Is Father There Is Only One woke?
No — Father There Is Only One is not woke, scoring 4 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Father There Is Only One have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Feminist Agenda at 12.
How does Father There Is Only One compare to other 2019 movies?
It ranks #244 of the 284 films from 2019 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Black Christmas (79).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.