Like Father (2018)
Directed by Lauren Miller Rogen
No — Like Father is not woke, scoring 15 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
There is a moment early in Like Father when a bride's phone tumbles from her bouquet mid-ceremony, and her groom, a man who has clearly been waiting for exactly this confirmation, calls the whole thing off.
Consciousness Markers
The film repeatedly contrasts soul-crushing corporate workaholism with a more fulfilling life, and Harry sacrifices his company to care for his partner. The anti-rat-race message is present but soft and personal rather than systemic.
A female director (Lauren Miller Rogen) and a career-driven female protagonist give a mild feminist sheen, but the arc is ultimately about father-daughter reconciliation rather than any gender critique.
The film delivers a gentle sermon about putting family and life ahead of career, most explicitly when Harry throws Rachel's phone into a waterfall. The moralizing is present but mild and character-driven.
The cast is led by white stars Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer, with a handful of supporting minority performers (Alex Pérez, Leonard Ouzts, Blaire Brooks) in incidental roles. Diversity exists but is not a stated priority or marketing angle.
The upstate organic potato-chip-making former New Yorkers gesture faintly at a back-to-nature ethos, but environmental themes are not a real concern of the film.
The cruise's dinner-table couples include some racial variety, but race is never a subject of the narrative or commentary.
No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes appear anywhere in the film.
No body-positivity themes or messaging are present.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are depicted.
The film makes no historical claims or revisions.
Why it received this score
There is a moment early in Like Father when a bride's phone tumbles from her bouquet mid-ceremony, and her groom, a man who has clearly been waiting for exactly this confirmation, calls the whole thing off. The film treats this as tragedy. It is actually a tidy thesis statement. What follows is a Netflix dramedy in which a workaholic executive named Rachel boards her prepaid Caribbean honeymoon with the estranged father she has not seen since childhood, and the two strangers slowly learn that family outranks the quarterly earnings call. Lauren Miller Rogen directs with a light hand and a gentler conscience, and the results are pleasant, predictable, and almost entirely untroubled by the cultural anxieties of its moment.
The cast is anchored by two white television veterans and filled out with a handful of supporting players who exist to populate a dinner table. Race is present on that cruise and never mentioned. No LGBTQ characters appear. Nobody discusses their body, their brain, or the planet. The film's mildest convictions arrive in the form of a phone flung into a waterfall and a pair of upstate organic potato chip makers who abandoned the rat race, gentle nudges toward a life of meaning that stop well short of any systemic complaint. Corporate ambition gets criticized, but only as a personal failing, and the redemption arc is capped by a woman rerouting a business trip to help her father move. The sermon is delivered softly, from the pulpit of a lounge chair.
This is a film that wants to say something about what matters and settles for saying something about what is nice. It is competent, watchable, and resolutely untroubling. I have classified it. I have moved on.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
When a workaholic young executive is left at the altar, she ends up on her Caribbean honeymoon cruise with the last person she ever expected: her estranged and equally workaholic father. The two depart as strangers, but over the course of a few hilarious adventures, a couple of umbrella-clad cocktails and a whole lot of soul-searching, they return with a renewed appreciation for family and life.
Questions about Like Father
Is Like Father woke?
No — Like Father is not woke, scoring 15 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Like Father have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Eat the Rich at 28.
How does Like Father compare to other 2018 movies?
It ranks #137 of the 325 films from 2018 we've scored; their average is 20. The wokest is Return (92).
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.