Review
Don’t look now, but it’s another insipid flick about a dopey dad who can’t control a pack of wild kids. And I mean it — you should not look at this movie — though I suspect lots of youngsters will do just that. From the way the film was cast, “Cheaper By The Dozen” seems to have been put together solely for the purpose of separating kids from their parents’ hard-earned dough. The presence of teen queen Hilary Duff and heartthrob Tom Welling of TV’s “Smallville” practically ensures this purported comedy will be a box office success despite a conspicuous lack of anything remotely humorous. After all, the target demographic isn’t known for its sophisticated taste. The question is, what in the world was Steve Martin thinking when he took this job? Martin is one of the sharpest and funniest minds in show business, but try as he might, he can barely pull a single laugh out of the wreckage.
Tom and Kate Baker (Bonnie Hunt) live in small Illinois town with their dozen children (a Baker’s dozen … get it?). Day-today life is as wacky as you’d expect it to be with a house full of precocious moppets who are all entirely too vivacious for anyone’s good. After Tom lands his dream job coaching a big university football team, he and his fertile spouse uproot the family, further amplifying the household chaos. And things really get out of hand when Kate is whisked away to do a book tour for her recently published memoirs and Tom is left to fend for himself against his boisterous brood. This is a formula that’s been applied ad nauseum in Hollywood, and usually with better results. Next to “Cheaper By The Dozen,” even the decidedly uninspired “Daddy Day Care” plays like the second-coming of “Blazing Saddles.” Sure, the movie qualifies as family-friendly fare, but so does most of the pedestrian pap on network television. So why pay for it when you can get it for free at home? Last time I checked, they’re still showing “Eight Is Enough” reruns on Nickelodeon. (Rated PG for language and some thematic elements. Running time: 99 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 24, 2003. Read the original PDF.