Cheaper by the dozen (2003)

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.