Dad Pact
A small group of men in a small town are terrible at being husbands and fathers. Their various and diverse circumstances lead them all to the same small town church, where they get roped into an ancillary men's fellowship group.
-Edward Peters is pastor of the small church; his teenage daughter is critical of his overbearing parenting style that constantly embarrasses her and keeps her more or less cooped up. His wife, previously supportive, begins to echo some of the same criticisms, and thinks perhaps if he busied himself with more male friends he'd relax his hellfire and brimstone grip a bit, and vies for him to start a men's fellowship at the church - something that had previously flopped from lack of interest.
-Jamison Jance is an alcoholic, lives in a trailer by himself, on welfare and weed sales, and is baled out of the drunk tank by his ex-wife one too many times. He desperately wants a relationship with his kids, but she won't let him be a part of their lives until he cleans up, which she has no hope he'll ever do. So Jamison goes sniffing around the church for help, possibly some kind of AA program, but that church doesn't have one, so he attends the men's fellowship, drunk, and treats it like an AA program.
-Jon Chan is insecure, sort of lazy, gets taken advantage of and pushed around at work, and he learns his wife is cheating on him. When he finds out he immediately blames himself, but he thinks it's because he's not playing it safe enough, and the answer is being MORE generally submissive, and let her and his boss walk all over him even MORE. He ends up at the fellowship too for some reason.
-Zeke Zuckerman is an attorney at law, who works long hours, acknowledges he gets guilty people off the hook if they're rich enough, and often spends time out golfing away from his family, with the guys, often womanizing and drinking. His wife doesn't really approve of any of this, and his son is clearly getting into weird gang activity, so she guilts him into going to church with them one-day and he ends up reluctantly in the men's fellowship.
-Rogelio Sanchez is a single father of triplets who is exhausted, lives on a boat, and got fired after falling asleep on the job. He basically just needs a job and fast, and is struggling because childcare is expensive. He ends up in church almost just as a break while the kids are in Sunday school, but the pretty looking nursery volunteer agrees to watch the triplets for extra time while he goes to the men's fellowship.
While they're all in the group, most of them begrudgingly, Pastor Edward picks up on a snide comment from Zeke, which causes him to close the bible he was disinterestedly studying with them and starts asking them all pointed questions, which cascades into heartfelt personal conversations about their struggles, and inputs from the other men. In the end, they all agree they want to be better dads, and make a pact both to do better, and to help each other do better by any means necessary. They come up with a secret handshake and purchase matching skull lapels that they wear on their jackets.
Throughout the course of the story, they all pull various strings to help each other out. Zeke hires Rogelio and Jamison to pull off not especially legal stakeout operations to gather intel that helps him on cases. Jon and Edward don't really approve of the methods, but Edward starts getting other ideas, and starts initiating other men as a second tier of dads who are basically warm bodies, and the main five men conspire to make all kinds of changes to the town to benefit them, such as flooding the local school system on Edwards behalf against leftist curriculum at odds with the church's teaching and at odds with his strict parenting, and secretly and subtly destroying the life of the man Jon's wife is cheating on him with. The men's fellowship turns into an all-out secret society as each initiate, while performing their initiate duties builds up a folder of blackmail on themselves, while also experiencing the perks of compliance, as everyone in the group has stuff to offer and stuff to lose, including tangible items, sudden raises, opportunities for their kids to go to the fancy private school on the hill after other kids mysteriously "drop out", etc.
Although all five original men have taken back their power as men, each of their personal arcs continue to suffer. Edward only gets more power hungry, Zeke only gets more manipulative and corrupt, Rogelio becomes completely money-obsessed, and Jamison at no point stops drinking, and isn't getting anywhere trying to convince his ex to let him see his kids. The exception is Jon, who ultimately has to stand up to them and insist everyone do the right thing, especially after their individual corruptions are starting to push each other away from each other and make them fight amongst themselves, threatening the integrity of the society.
After they each hit their darkest moments, they realize Jon's right, and they meet back up for an actual, honest, men's fellowship meeting where they study the actual bible and what it has to say about being a man, husband and father. They turn around and start making improvements to the town, such as Edward finally starting an AA group at church, which Zeke helps fill, and Jamison quits, and also Jamison helps drive the gangsters out of town except for a couple that Zeke threatens with intimidating legalese, and they are frightened into going to church and joining the fellowship, where they have to clean old people's gutters and stuff. Zeke, besides just taking more honest cases also is home more and helps with homework and starts teaching the kids valuable law related lessons. Finally, for Jon, destroying the man his wife was cheating on him with didn't actually make her more attracted to him, so he does two things: he has to make things right with that guy, but also he blows up a car with his mind in front of his boss or something like that to stand up for himself. Basically he grows a spine over the course of the movie. The end.
A small group of men in a small town are terrible at being husbands and fathers. Their various and diverse circumstances lead them all to the same small town church, where they get roped into an ancillary men's fellowship group.
-Edward Peters is pastor of the small church; his teenage daughter is critical of his overbearing parenting style that constantly embarrasses her and keeps her more or less cooped up. His wife, previously supportive, begins to echo some of the same criticisms, and thinks perhaps if he busied himself with more male friends he'd relax his hellfire and brimstone grip a bit, and vies for him to start a men's fellowship at the church - something that had previously flopped from lack of interest.
-Jamison Jance is an alcoholic, lives in a trailer by himself, on welfare and weed sales, and is baled out of the drunk tank by his ex-wife one too many times. He desperately wants a relationship with his kids, but she won't let him be a part of their lives until he cleans up, which she has no hope he'll ever do. So Jamison goes sniffing around the church for help, possibly some kind of AA program, but that church doesn't have one, so he attends the men's fellowship, drunk, and treats it like an AA program.
-Jon Chan is insecure, sort of lazy, gets taken advantage of and pushed around at work, and he learns his wife is cheating on him. When he finds out he immediately blames himself, but he thinks it's because he's not playing it safe enough, and the answer is being MORE generally submissive, and let her and his boss walk all over him even MORE. He ends up at the fellowship too for some reason.
-Zeke Zuckerman is an attorney at law, who works long hours, acknowledges he gets guilty people off the hook if they're rich enough, and often spends time out golfing away from his family, with the guys, often womanizing and drinking. His wife doesn't really approve of any of this, and his son is clearly getting into weird gang activity, so she guilts him into going to church with them one-day and he ends up reluctantly in the men's fellowship.
-Rogelio Sanchez is a single father of triplets who is exhausted, lives on a boat, and got fired after falling asleep on the job. He basically just needs a job and fast, and is struggling because childcare is expensive. He ends up in church almost just as a break while the kids are in Sunday school, but the pretty looking nursery volunteer agrees to watch the triplets for extra time while he goes to the men's fellowship.
While they're all in the group, most of them begrudgingly, Pastor Edward picks up on a snide comment from Zeke, which causes him to close the bible he was disinterestedly studying with them and starts asking them all pointed questions, which cascades into heartfelt personal conversations about their struggles, and inputs from the other men. In the end, they all agree they want to be better dads, and make a pact both to do better, and to help each other do better by any means necessary. They come up with a secret handshake and purchase matching skull lapels that they wear on their jackets.
Throughout the course of the story, they all pull various strings to help each other out. Zeke hires Rogelio and Jamison to pull off not especially legal stakeout operations to gather intel that helps him on cases. Jon and Edward don't really approve of the methods, but Edward starts getting other ideas, and starts initiating other men as a second tier of dads who are basically warm bodies, and the main five men conspire to make all kinds of changes to the town to benefit them, such as flooding the local school system on Edwards behalf against leftist curriculum at odds with the church's teaching and at odds with his strict parenting, and secretly and subtly destroying the life of the man Jon's wife is cheating on him with. The men's fellowship turns into an all-out secret society as each initiate, while performing their initiate duties builds up a folder of blackmail on themselves, while also experiencing the perks of compliance, as everyone in the group has stuff to offer and stuff to lose, including tangible items, sudden raises, opportunities for their kids to go to the fancy private school on the hill after other kids mysteriously "drop out", etc.
Although all five original men have taken back their power as men, each of their personal arcs continue to suffer. Edward only gets more power hungry, Zeke only gets more manipulative and corrupt, Rogelio becomes completely money-obsessed, and Jamison at no point stops drinking, and isn't getting anywhere trying to convince his ex to let him see his kids. The exception is Jon, who ultimately has to stand up to them and insist everyone do the right thing, especially after their individual corruptions are starting to push each other away from each other and make them fight amongst themselves, threatening the integrity of the society.
After they each hit their darkest moments, they realize Jon's right, and they meet back up for an actual, honest, men's fellowship meeting where they study the actual bible and what it has to say about being a man, husband and father. They turn around and start making improvements to the town, such as Edward finally starting an AA group at church, which Zeke helps fill, and Jamison quits, and also Jamison helps drive the gangsters out of town except for a couple that Zeke threatens with intimidating legalese, and they are frightened into going to church and joining the fellowship, where they have to clean old people's gutters and stuff. Zeke, besides just taking more honest cases also is home more and helps with homework and starts teaching the kids valuable law related lessons. Finally, for Jon, destroying the man his wife was cheating on him with didn't actually make her more attracted to him, so he does two things: he has to make things right with that guy, but also he blows up a car with his mind in front of his boss or something like that to stand up for himself. Basically he grows a spine over the course of the movie. The end.
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