Bryce Dallas Howard directs a love letter to dads around the world in this heartwarming documentary. She interviews celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, Ron Howard, and more, asking questions about what fatherhood means to them while cutting together stories about dads from around the world.
Per Ron Howard, being a good dad is three simple things:
Providing love
Making a child feel safe
Setting an example
Each short story in DADS captures precisely that from a dad who didn’t want his kid to becoming his compass. There’s even a dad who was awful at parenting, read a few books, and taught himself on the job. At one point, Will Smith talks about how you get a 1,000-page instruction manual for a 4K TV, yet when you leave the hospital with your newborn – you don’t get anything.
What I learned watching this Father’s Day classic is that being a dad is hard. Society has dictated that a dad is supposed to be the provider, yet that’s not always the case in today’s world. A good gardener helps a seed become what it wants to become, not what the gardener wants it to be. Thank you, DADS, for reminding me that my role as a father is to be a master gardener in my stepson’s life.
It’s available on Apple TV+.
