Movie Review: Cheaper by the Dozen

Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) 

Directed by Shawn Levy 

Written by Sam Harper, Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow 

Starring Steve Martin, Paula Marshall, Richard Jenkins, Bonnie Hunt, Tom Welling, Hillary Duff

Release Date December 25th, 2003 

Published December 21st, 2003

I should have seen this coming. The warning signs were there. A preview screening nearly a month before the film’s release. A script adaptation credited to eight--yes, I said eight--writers. And a director who aspires to mediocrity because mediocre would be an improvement over what he's done before. Nevertheless, I still happily attended the screening of Cheaper By The Dozen because I thought Steve Martin can't possibly make a film that bad. I could not have been more wrong.

The plot description for this film is somewhat difficult because it's essentially a series of sub-sitcom level moments of family comedy. Martin stars as a football coach in a small Illinois town. He and his wife, played by Bonnie Hunt (also one of the eight credited writers), are unique because they were high school sweethearts who have been married for 22 years, and they have 12 children. Their family farm house is an absolute mess of toys and small animals and sporting equipment. Meanwhile, each of the kids have a handy little quirk to help us tell them apart. The archetypes are classic ABC TGIF kids: the tomboy, the prissy one, the really smart one, the fat kid and so on and so forth. It saves the time of having to write 12 individual characters.

The plot, such as it is, has Martin's character accepting a new job at a big college. So, the family packs up and moves to a Chicago suburb where they meet their neighbors, played by Alan Ruck and Paula Marshall. (Poor Marshall has the thankless task of playing the only-in-the-movies type of bitch character that says horribly insensitive things and will get her comeuppance by the end of the film.) However Marshall isn't nearly as abused as poor Richard Jenkins. Slumming from his role as the coolest dead guy on TV on HBO's Six Feet Under, Jenkins play Martin's best friend and new boss who is required to be inhumanly stupid. It is poor Mr. Jenkins’ character who forces Martin to choose between his job and his 12 kids. Well golly, what do you think he will choose?

Hunt's character writes a book about her family that lands on the bestseller list, forcing her to leave the family for a few days for a book tour. Golly, do you think dad can handle taking care of all of those kids by himself? I don't know about you, but I think we’re in for hijinks here. The kids trash a neighbor’s birthday party by accidentally releasing a snake in the house. Again it's poor Marshall who takes the brunt of that beating.

Oh it gets worse.

Teen stars Hillary Duff and Tom Welling play the family's two older children. In adjusting to their new high school, these two actors who look like fashion models are required by the script to be outcasts at their new school. It reminded me of the movie She's All That where Rachel Leigh Cook was considered a nerd because she wore glasses and baggy clothes, except that Welling and Duff never look like anything but the Gap models they are in real life.

Martin stretches and strains all over the screen trying to make this forced, stupid material work and the strain shows in every moment of the film. If you thought his Bringing Down The House character was forced, you will be shocked that this character is actually worse.

Director Shawn Levy cut his teeth on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel TV series’ until getting his big break directing 2003's very first worst movie of the year, Just Married. So how fitting that he should bookend 2003 with its final worst movie of the year. Cheaper By The Dozen is an awful movie. A sub-Brady Bunch sitcom, full of forced jokes and cheap contrived melodrama.

In the words of my hero, Roger Ebert, who used this phrase to sum up his feelings about the film North, "I HATED, HATED, HATED, HATED, HATED THIS MOVIE".