Cheaper by the Dozen (2022)

Cheaper by the Dozen (2022)

3/10

Starring

Gabrielle Union

Zach Braff

 

Directed by Gail Lerner

 

I am Black and fully African, and I spend way too much time watching movies. I am fed up with Hollywood trying to bridge the gap in the lack of racial diversity and doing it poorly. An all-white movie isn’t a bad thing when it delivers. A movie with all the racial diversity of a New York subway, poorly written and directed like a NickToon program for children, doesn’t solve the problem. The bad acting of the child actors was even worse; I’ve seen better acting in churches when children act out the nativity scene. "Boring" is an understatement for all that’s wrong with this movie. Then the ad placements by Cîroc and Cheetos—what happened to being subtle?

The political correctness and the whole idea of diversity have ruined movies for me. I have no problem with the new redesign of a movie. I had no problem with Cheaper by the Dozen adding children from one side, mixing in kids from another, with a little adoption and some unexpected pregnancies, and voilà, number twelve shows up. My problem was when this movie shifted from just being fun to becoming a current husband vs. ex-husband battle. Adopted dad vs. biological dad battle. The movie made absolutely no sense to me when this started happening in the early minutes.

As I said, the couple in question is Paul and Zoe Baker (Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union, who are not-so-great onscreen). This is their second marriage, each having children from their first marriages. Add some surprises, and they’ve got twelve.

From the get-go, we see that the way they keep their family going is by surviving on any cheap help they can find. Things aren’t magically going well when Zoe’s ex (Dom) decides to move closer to the married couple to be near his children. This doesn’t go well with Paul, who feels intimidated by Dom’s stature, money, and fame. Add to that, they’re facing financial challenges, and Paul wants to sell their family business. This new change, along with the personal challenge Paul is facing, makes it hard for the family to stick together and function as a unit.

Suddenly, I’ve found respect for the older Cheaper by the Dozen with Steve Martin. At least there, the children were his and his wife’s. We didn’t have ex-wives and ex-husbands having a say in anything. The fun was watching this family try to keep it all together, realizing they couldn’t all the time, and watching everything go up in smoke as they tried to make it fit again.

The fun there was in the dramatic element the movie brought to the game, not some racial differences and dad battles that stopped being funny in 2005.

This new Disney+ addition to the mix is a no-no.