Here in 2026 we’re waist deep in a long overdue conversation about what it means to be a man. At a time when men’s mental health is finally entering the social zeitgeist, and we’re finally starting to confront the patriarchal norms that have pervaded society for way too long, it’s natural that we’d be seeing art that confronts the scourge of toxic masculinity (and here is where I plug my own film, Peak Form, which is coming to streaming in FoundTV on 11/13 — I hope you love it).
Having been raised in a generation of strict gender norms and limited ideas of masculinity, films that look to dismantle these notions tend to speak to me. So I present these next two reviews under the headline of “Are Men Okay??”
Adult Supervision (dir. – Alex Schulman)
When a middle school classroom proves too unruly for conventional behavioral modification, the administration decides to send the children on a team-building field trip at a campground. The hope is that they’ll bond with one another and purge themselves of typical adolescent social abuses. No more bullying, name-calling, or ostracism. And certainly, the kids could do with having some parents serve dual roles of chaperone and role model, right?
Right?
Three dads volunteer (or are volunteered) to oversee the trip, each with a different view of what fatherhood should look like. What starts as an easy friendship of shared circumstances soon becomes strained by their differing viewpoints and methodologies.
Adult Supervision (which I keep accidentally referring to as Parental Guidance whenever someone asks me about it) is first and foremost a comedy. There’s a mixture of broad comedy and more situation-based cringe moments that makes for a tone similar to the work of Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure) or Alexander Payne (The Holdovers). At its silliest, the film employs broad sight gags that elicit belly laughs. At its most intellectual, the film allows for slow-burn gags that simmer over the course of an entire act, resulting in explosive punchlines built on a framework of strong character work. There’s a generational divide between the adult chaperones, young adult counselors, and adolescent children that speaks to the cyclical nature of trauma, as well as the sometimes clueless ways in which we traumatize one another: one man’s harmless joke is another man’s lifelong resentment toward authority figures.
It’s a frequently stunning film, with the campground architecture and natural setting used to create many stirring images. The vast setting is used in contrast to the insular chaos of the campground, which is in turn used as a mirror to highlight the tensions of our protagonists. By illustrating chaos in macro and micro, we get an ensemble that is well motivated, in a film that refuses to cast judgment upon any one of them. I can see a little of myself in each of the leading trio of men, and I think most men who are honest with themselves will feel the same way. I suspect that’s largely the point of the film.
I do wish the story spent a little more time with the children, specifically the daughters of the leading trio, as I think it would have served the characterizations in a big way, but I wonder if that would’ve subtracted from the relatability — even men without children should probably have an opportunity to look inward.
Test (dir. Sam McConnell)
My first thought while watching this tremendous character study was in the realm of casting. Since acting and bodybuilding are both “all in” professions, where does one find a leading actor who can carry the tremendously heavy drama of such a film while also maintaining the extreme body type that the role requires? Well as it turns out, our leading man, Brock Yurich, is also the writer. With his rather unique physique, and the role of the Incredible Hulk now being played by CGI, Yurich pulled a Stallone and wrote a role precision-tailored to his talents. And frankly, he knocked it out of the park.
He plays Eddie, a struggling bodybuilder from small-town Ohio who desperately wants to go pro, just like his father before him. He’s working a restaurant job to help make ends meet, moonlighting as a cam-boy to finance the neverending run of expenses that his chosen passions require. Bodybuilding takes an ever-growing time investment, and the variety of chemicals he must inject are neither cheap nor easy to acquire. Add to that his doting mother’s oxy addiction, and Eddie is barely hanging on.
This is a tale of obsession and passion in the vein of Whiplash or Magazine Dreams, but with a heavy focus on the intersection between faith and sexuality. Eddie is a churchgoing man — a true believer. He’s also starting to grapple with his sexuality. The film sees him exploring with both men and women, which challenges the implied rules of his church, as well as the expectations put upon him as a picturesque “macho man.”
Test challenges the viewer to upend their preconceived notions of masculinity, and in a meta sense, their notions of a lumbering “meathead.” Eddie proves to be a complicated soul, created by an artist who, to look at him, would have just about anyone dismissing him as a dumb jock. But Yurich’s script is mature and thoughtful, his performance dense and layered. The dialogue is true to life, without the silly platitudes that fuel so many movies about athleticism.
The supporting cast is filled out with astonishing turns from Tammy Blanchard as Eddie’s mother, Paloma Garcia-Lee as his girlfriend and truth-teller, and Mike Edward as his no-nonsense coach and secret lover. The direction is particularly strong, capturing both the beauty and ugliness of bodybuilding, often in a single shot. McConnell utilizes the facial landscape of all of his actors in intimate closeups that allow subtlety to shine through in a decidedly unsubtle setting.
What strikes me most of all about this nearly flawless film is the degree of empathy which shines through. Each and every character, even at their worst, are easy to root for. We want them all to be okay. We want their passions to be realized — their destruction to be reversed.
