Cheaper by the dozen (2003)
7/10
Starring
Steve Martin
Bonnie Hunt
Tom Welling
Piper Perabo
Hillary Duff
Directed by Shawn Levy
Cheaper by the dozen takes you by surprise (or best still took me by
surprise), because the movie turned out to be very good and all so
memorable.
I recall seeing it then and thinking how were they going to manage
the screen time with a family of fourteen people. The director (Shawn
Levy, Night
at the Museum Series) did it. He did it in such a way, that
if he had tried to develop anything from a solo point of one
character the others would have drowned. What he did was to find ways
of dragging the remaining thirteen into the life of anyone of the
family going through anything.
The one thing that made me even see this movie back then was the the
leads.
Steve Martin for me was a funny character to watch on film and Bonnie
Hunt was still fresh on my mind from the
1995 movie Jumanji with Robin Williams. When I was young,
Jumaji
was a staple weekly consumption for many years.
Based on a somewhat real life account of the Gilbreth family, which
was written as a semi-autobiography of the same name by Frank and
Ernestine Gilbreth (siblings in the Gilbreth family).
This movie is a remake of a 1950 movie of the same name, since I have
not seen that there will be no comparison in this review.
We meet the Baker family with parents Tom (Martin) and Kate (Hunt).
Tom is coaches college football and was over joyed when he got a job
offer in another state to coach the college team which will require
him moving his family there. Although the children do not want to
leave their home, the parents agree and the move was set.
Kate raised the couples twelve children and from her experience
raising them wrote a book which was picked up to be published.
Now that the publishing was set, she has to go on a promotion tour.
Leaving home is not something she does, as she is a stay at home mum,
Tom not wanting to ruin his wife’s dream of a life outside of being
a mother to twelve children encouraged her to go and said he could
handle the children.
Soon we find out that Tom was not ready for the responsibility of
raising twelve children and he also has to do this while being top
notch at his job.
The movie is about how the couple navigate their lives while having
to deal with their children which is where all the comedy comes from.
It is an ok movie.
0 comments:
Post a Comment