Baker's dozen (Cheaper By The Dozen (DVD))

Member Name: theediscerning

Product:	Cheaper By The Dozen (DVD)
Date:	05/07/05 (116 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Bonnie Hunt, if you're theed

Disadvantages: Standard Hollywood comedy fare, if you aren't so shallow in your considerations

Before you start, yes this is an old op rush-posted across from elsewhere in honour of dooyoo's new look. Whatever the connection is, there must be one, so bear with it.

Tom Baker (no, nothing to do with Dr Who) is perfectly happy living among chaos. His job involves watching people run at each other wearing half a hundredweight of plastic, and shouting a lot (he coaches American "football").

His homelife is no less weird, as he lives in a huge mansion in the middle of nowhere, with his gorgeous wife, and his, er, twelve children.

We as voyeurs on the Baker household see the slapstick chaos this can provide, and the slightly lovey-dovey relationship between him and Kate, the mother of all this stock (although we never see a single shot in their bedroom, for some chaste reason). But of course, this is about to change.

His dream job offered him, he decides to rally the family and up sticks to the city, so he can coach the team at his alma mater, and prove something to himself after all these years.

In the protestations against this we see all the differences between the children. There's the hunky older son, wishing to stay near his girlfriend. There's the shy, bookish, odd-looking one, wishing to staying near the grave of his first pet frog (it is the son of said frog, it seems, that provides the set-piece slapstick early on).

There's also the fat one who looks totally different to them all (luckily Kate is never under suspicion about the oddities in her brood), the fashion victim older girl, the evil one, the near-silent twins, and so on. In the background there's even the first-born, having moved out to start a life of her own with her dumb-ass model/actor boyfriend, but still with strong bonds back home.

(If all that sounds long, it's a lot quicker to work out what all the kids are like in the film, they're all very well defined, very well played and so on.)

So, having found a suitable mansion in the middle of somewhere, so Tom can work with his Chicago students, things look settled, even though none of the offspring seem to believe that life is looking happier.

Although it would be just now, wouldn't it, that Kate also gets the dream of her life? Her first book is being published, which requires a stay in New York, then further time away.

With a dozen raucous characters, and no full-time parent present, can the family, the house, the neighbours etc, survive?

Well, it would be an idiot who doubts the answer to that, but worry not, the journey there is not as bad as it seems. The comedy is well-timed, quite inventive (it's not just Home Alone-style hitting people on the head, for example), and well-sustained.

Steve Martin is rounding off his sixth decade as rather a busy man. Books, films of his books, take-it-or-leave-it performances in run-of-the-mill Hollywood fare... Often he has been accused of being just Steve Martin, but here it is proven again that there is little actually wrong with that.

Bonnie Hunt was not an actress known to theed, but from now on will be. Yes, she is too good-looking for a 44-year old with a dozen children, as some of the other characters profess. However for a family film, she is certainly what the fathers will be tuning into, playing a great mum, with a wide range of hair-styles, the great ability to say just what she should at the right time, and an airy breeziness that is just right for the part, without being overplayed.

To continue to credit all-comers would be silly, there being too many of them and not enough hours in your day. So to continue with the something-for-all idea, the teenage girls have Tom "Smallville" Welling in his first ever film, as the older son. The teenage boys will be bored, but their younger models were successfully laughing throughout the preview screening theed was attending. The mothers can just settle back and try and see this as credible, which may be stretching things a bit too much at times.

Director Shawn Levy must have had some second thoughts with working with so many children, but his production team have found a large batch of winsome prodigies-in-the-making, and he handles them all well. The script helps, but in the action scenes there is a workmanlike ability to succeed, and in the gentle family pieces an eye for the subtler humour (the older daughter being forgotten mid-call while she rings home for one). It's also a heck of an improvement on his first film, a biggest comedy stinker that theed saw at yet another freebie, Just Married.

Steve Martin approves, as it's this partnership that's seeing the new Pink Panther prequel film into fruition for spring 2006.

Cheaper by the Dozen will not set anyone's life alive, and probably didn't blaze a trail through the rental shelves for long, before being in all the 'for sale' dump-bins in the corner.

It's not a great film, it's not a bad film. As a mild comedy it is a good success, and as a family drama it survives until just the last ten minutes before the gloppy sentimentality hits home. When it does, unfortunately, it hits home very hard indeed, but this is to be forgiven.

Cheaper by the Dozen, when theed saw it in the cinema, was rated certificate PG for some cartoonish violence, vomit jokes and nothing else, really. It's 105 minutes or so, and feels just right, length-wise.


What might not feel right is the news of a sequel, for next year. The chap who directed Steve Martin in Bringing Down the House, and who did that stupid Pacifier thing recently, is apparently doing it, and it might (or might not) feature a "rival family" with ten kids of their own. It's fitting, if not welcome, that a film seemingly agreeing with such hyperproductivity in the offspring department should have at least one further generation.



PS No, there is no link with the new-look dooyoo. Ho-hum.

Summary: Film, sprogs, some jokes, decent woman, OK kids, that sort of thing.