Doce en casa

As a child, I read and loved the book, "Cheaper by the dozen", so I rented the movie expecting an on-screen adaptation of the book. I think the only similarities are the title, and the fact that they have 12 kids. The movie does the book a huge injustice.

Expectations aside, the movie had some plot holes, but I would have appreciated this kind of film if I was a parent looking for a family film. It reminded me of the old Disney classics my family rented when I was growing up. I'm sure that kids would love the mess and destruction that seemed to be the focal point of the movie. They tried to cram too many sub-plots into it when they could have focused strictly on the family dynamics and had a great movie.

I'm just glad I rented it and didn't spend $$ at the theater.

Tom (Steve Martin) and Kate Baker (Bonnie Hunt) had big career dreams and big family dreams. The family wins out and they leave the big city. The kids don't stop coming until number 12. The oldest being played by Piper Perabo, Tom Welling, and Hilary Duff. There are also twins, lookalike girls, sad little boy, other girl, cute boy, chunkier boy, and smaller cute boy. Tom is a high school football coach who gets a chance at a bigger job. The family is forced to move to the city for his job where Nora (Piper Perabo) lives with her boyfriend Hank (Ashton Kutcher). With less time with the big job, Tom has to deal with everything else after Kate gets a book tour to NYC.

Let's be obvious. There are too many kids. It becomes chaos not just in the house but in the story. It's just a series of wacky slapstick. It's general harmless family fun. If you don't have enough fun, the characters will keep smashing things up until you laugh. It's a lot pratfall fluff and not a lot of seriousness. There are some good silly fun pushing Kutcher around. Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt are definitely game for all the craziness.

Let's see if this film has all the necessaries of a modern film.

1) Classic title 2) Dad is an idiot 3) New script bearing no resemblance to the original. 4) Male lead cannot droll without instructions from female 5) Children are out of control 6) The man is incurably stupid 7) Mother is a wise saint 8) Father has no clue about his own home (have I covered that already??) 9) Large families result from irresponsibility

I saw and loved the original. I held no illusions that this would be nearly as good. In fact I knew it would require some updates. The world of the 1950s when the original was made and the 1920s when it was set are dramatically different.

The story is weak, the comedy is poor, the new plot is bigoted.

In the original, Clifton Webb play an efficiency expert Frank Gilbreth. In fact, Frank Gilbreth's principles are still taught in course on efficiency in industry. He was a real person. And a competent one. His son John Kenneth Gilbreth, went on to become one of the world's leading economists. To this very day.

In this one, Frank Baker (Baker's dozen ... get it? Hit me over the head with a joke why doncha?) is a small time football coach who is so inefficient that he can't get breakfast on the table and wipe up a spill at the same time. And it's hard to imagine his wanna be drop out son becoming anything but a bum.

The scene from the original where the woman from Planned Parenthood came to the door to humorous results was morphed into the yuppy neighbors, the Shenks, essentially scolding anyone who has or wants more than two kids. Tina is so obsessed with having only one that Bill is portray as sexually frustrated ... he ain't getting none lest she conceive again.

I grew up in a family of 13. While my Dad was not the modern hands on type, he was aware of where things were and how things worked. He could cook and do the laundry and get us off to school on time. And he worked hard to be able to pay for us all to go to Catholic school. He had to be efficient; every 18 months or so, Mom was squeezing out another sib.

We were well behaved. We had to be. If not, 13 children turn into the unruly mob shown in this stupid film. I knew other families like ours. From nine to fifteen kids. They were all self disciplined families. I cannot tell you how many people, my sister-in-law included, who have asked me if it was "that way in your house." People came out of this movie thinking that large families are rude and out of control.

Just kidding. I truly believe that some people have good intentions when commencing to write a critique. However, it seems to me like some of the people who commented about "Cheaper by the Dozen" were either on drugs or should be. Sheesh guys...it was a movie. It was just plain old entertainment. Time will decide whether or not this film was a classic. Please, take it from me don't hold your breath waiting. I'm not going to hold mine.

Yup, I thought it was going to be a comedy. Yup, I became annoyed with the movie about the time they all moved to Evanston, IL. Yup, the lil red headed dude[Mark] reminded me of the Harry Potter kid. Big deal. Frankly, the last 152 critiques were funnier, though some much more annoying in length, than the kids in that movie.

All in all...it was an okay film. Well worth the 99 cents that I spent to rent it. Musicians1, Victor Field and Katrina Ann Van Tylor were slendid as comedic crictics. Katrina should be given the award for Epic criticism. Victor the award for best music critic and last and thank god not least musician1 The Life Time Achievement Award for lack of any structure, punctuation or thought. Musician1 is the person who I owe my deepest gratitude for getting me to read all 152 comments. I had to see if they were all going to be so rambling. Thank goodness for brevity.

While the CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN opening titles credit the authors of the best-selling book the original 1950 film was based on (Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey), don't expect to see a remake of the charming, early-20th century comedy about two efficiency experts (Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy) running a complex but happy family...and this is not a BAD thing!

While the 1950 production is a minor classic, the thrust of the earlier film was with the parents, and oldest daughter (the late Jeanne Crain). Clifton Webb was a gifted, acerbic actor, best known, previously, as 'child hating' author Lynn Belvedere, who proved he was as adept at raising children as he was at EVERYTHING he attempted, in the 1948 hit, SITTING PRETTY. The film was such a success that two sequels were made, and Webb would do several more 'family' comedies before his death in 1966. Playing Frank Bunker Gilbreth, the father of twelve, was a 'natural' for the actor, and the 61-year old Webb 'stole' the film with his self-effacing, 'scientific' approach to child rearing. As his wife, Lillian, Myrna Loy, who had graduated from being 'Nora Charles' in the "Thin Man" series, to being Hollywood's favorite wife/mom, shared Bonnie Hunt's sweetness, sense of organization, and dry humor, but lacked a sexual chemistry with Webb that would have actually produced twelve children (perhaps because of the less 'permissive' time the film was made, or perhaps because of Webb's screen persona). Jeanne Crain, one of 20th Century Fox's favorite ingénues for over six years, had a large fan base, which the studio capitalized on (She was actually second-billed in the film, behind Webb). Her scene at a 1920's prom, with Webb as her 'date', is a film highlight. While the eleven other children were given 'moments' in the film, they barely registered, individually.

Would 2003 audiences have gone to see Martin in a period comedy set eighty years earlier? I doubt it. And had the original story had been simply 'updated', would it have been truly faithful to the source, even in spirit? Unlikely, as so much has changed over the years. Ultimately, the film makers erred, I believe, in using the title of the earlier film, but not in the approach of making a 'family-friendly' comedy about a household of massive proportions.

With Steve Martin, who has become Hollywood's quintessential 'Dad', as a loving, unconventional father/football coach given an opportunity to head his alma mater's team, he displays the same kind of sensitivity that made PARENTHOOD such a wonderful film. Bonnie Hunt, as his wife, is completely believable as a successful author who could handle her large family and still-frisky husband equally well. She is, as always, a treasure!

The children are really the stars of the film, though, and each is special, and individual, from the eldest daughter (Piper Perabo), who, at 22, wants the family to accept the guy she's living with (Ashton Kutcher, in a funny, brief role), to the youngest pair of twins (Brent and Shane Kinsman), who make an art out of wreaking havoc. Tom Welling is quite likable, and proves that he is more than just 'Clark Kent' (For you trivia fans, Kutcher almost got the part of 'Superman' in an upcoming film, which would have put two 'Men of Steel' in the cast). The only discordant note is Hillary Duff's annoyingly brittle second daughter; she may be a 'teen idol', but she is more grating than endearing.

Director Shawn Levy's previous film, JUST MARRIED, was a loud, unpleasant, clichéd bore; in CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN, he redeems himself with a more enjoyable, richer film.

While the movie will never earn the 'classic' status the earlier film achieved, it stands very well on it's own merits!