Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Hilary Duff, Tom Welling, and Piper Perabo star in “Cheaper by the Dozen” (2003), a family comedy about a married couple and their 12 children. The film is cheerful and good-natured, and I think parents and grandparents probably won’t mind watching it with kids. I know I got a few chuckles out of it.
Martin and Hunt play Tom and Kate Baker, a couple who have spent 20-something years raising their super-sized brood in idyllic, bucolic middle America. But Tom gets his dream job coaching football at a big university, and he moves the family to a mansion in a snooty Chicago suburb where even the middle-schoolers drink latte. Then things get really complicated when Kate goes on a book tour to promote her memoir. Meanwhile, the 12 rambunctious Baker kids have their own ways of expressing their feelings about the radical changes in the family’s lifestyle.
I found the principals and child actors to all be quite likable in their roles. Incidentally, watch for Ashton Kutcher in an uncredited appearance.This movie is a remake of a beloved 1950 film of the same name that starred Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy. I’ve never seen the original, but I’m told by an old-timer that there’s very little left of it in the remake. However, one of the Baker daughters does make a reference to her Great-Grandma Gilbreth. Also, we learn that Kate’s maiden name was Gilbreth, the name of the real-life family who inspired the story.
As I watched the 2003 “Cheaper by the Dozen,” I couldn’t help being reminded of “The Brady Bunch” television show because the movie’s characters don’t live in the real world—they live in sitcom world. However, I found the film much more entertaining than the old TV series because the movie boasts high production values, the charismatic Steve Martin, and some well-orchestrated sequences of kiddie chaos.
The DVD containing the 2003 “Cheaper by the Dozen” provides both a widescreen and a full-screen version, two feature-length audio commentary tracks, a featurette, and five deleted/extended scenes with optional director’s commentary. Details regarding the DVD release are listed below.
DVD Details:
