Starring Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Piper Perabo, Tom Welling, Hilary Duff, Kevin Schmidt, Alyson Stoner, Richard Jenkins, Alan Ruck, Ashton Kutcher, Paula Marshall and a bunch of kids
Written By:
Directed By: Shawn Levy
Studio: 20th Century Fox
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A Family movie about family. Steve Martin plays great Dad roles in these types of movies like Parenthood, Father of the Bride and this. Though I did enjoy the movie, I still felt like I’ve seen this brand of family comedy done to death.

Cheaper By The Dozen is a remake from a 50’s movie that I haven’t seen. This one tells the story of two parents that have twelve freakin’ kids! One parent, Tom Baker, is a football coach, (Steve Martin) and another parent, Kate Baker, is a writer (Bonnie Hunt). I can’t imagine myself having even 1 kid haha; I think i’d lose my mind with 12. Tom gets offered a dream job to coach a college football team he onced played for and it’s a job he doesn’t want to turn down. The family ends up moving away into a big house, and into a snooty area. As this is happening, Kate gets one of her books published and has to do the press junket thing for several weeks, which leaves Tom home alone to watch after the zillions of kids they produced. The parents start to concentrate more on their careers instead of their children. The kids start up so much mischief and don’t care about their parents’ jobs it seems. I would have signed them over to the adoption agency at that point hahaha.

I felt like I was watching all those other family oriented movies when watching Cheaper By The Dozen. It almost feels like that TV show Just The Ten Of Us. Come to think of it, wasn’t the main character a coach as well? Maybe that show was based off the original movie?? It just didn’t feel very original or new though. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the film. I thought Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt did a great job, and had good chemistry together. I think by having so many characters on screen, it took away from the other performances or focused on a certain character too much. I would have liked to see a closure of the high school bullies to Charlie. I believe you don’t see them after a certain period in the movie. I would have liked to see them get there’s at the end. Hilary Duff and Ashton Kutcher could have used a little more screentime as well. I wonder if Ashton Kutcher is really like the way he was in the movie. Watches himself on TV and being mesmerized by himself, and act like an asshole to people. I thought Tom Welling looked a little bit too old for the part as well. Isn’t the guy in his late 20’s? haha. Must suck for him. Though I’m sure if I was an actor in my 40’s, I could pull off being in high school. Just today I got carded for seeing the Ladykillers. I’m 25 damnit!!

ANYWAY, The DVD has a few extras like deleted scenes and 2 commentary tracks. One by the director Shawn Levy (who I remember was in a 21 Jump Street episode) and the other track is by the Baker kids. I briefly listened to Levy’s comments concerning the movie and it seemed somewhat interesting. The deleted scenes had a few good scenes that they should have kept like the attempted torturing of their babyshitter. Besides the deleted scenes, there’s a mini-featurette called Director’s View finder and Shawn Levy talks about casting of the movie and about the story. It was a very small feature and I wasn’t really impressed with it. Overall, I liked the film and thought Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt were good in it, but the film could have used some originality and more laughs.

Features:
n- Director Commentary by Shawn Leavy
n- Actor Commentary by the Baker Kids
n- Director’s Viewfinder: Creating a Fictional Family
n- Featurette
n- 6 Deleted Scenes with Director’s Commentary

Audio:
ENGLISH: Dolby Digital 5.1
SPANISH: Dolby Digital Surround
FRENCH: Dolby Digital Surround

Video:
Widescreen 1.85:1 Color
Standard 1.33:1 Color

Subtitles:

Favorite Scenes: When Hank gets bitten by the dog, the throw up scenes
Rating: Rated PG
Running Time: 106 minutes
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: