Cheaper by the Dozen Poster

Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)

Comedy  
Rayting:   5.9/10 94.5K votes
Country: USA
Language: English
Release date: 15 April 2004

With his wife doing a book tour, a father of twelve must handle a new job and his unstable brood.

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User Reviews

Andrew-118 9 May 2004

As a child, I read and loved the book, "Cheaper by the dozen", so I rented the movie expecting an on-screen adaptation of the book. I think the only similarities are the title, and the fact that they have 12 kids. The movie does the book a huge injustice.

Expectations aside, the movie had some plot holes, but I would have appreciated this kind of film if I was a parent looking for a family film. It reminded me of the old Disney classics my family rented when I was growing up. I'm sure that kids would love the mess and destruction that seemed to be the focal point of the movie. They tried to cram too many sub-plots into it when they could have focused strictly on the family dynamics and had a great movie.

I'm just glad I rented it and didn't spend $$ at the theater.

ma-cortes 25 April 2006

Fmovies: The film deals about a happy family , the father (Steve Martin) is a notorious coach and the mother (Bonnie Hunt) is a writer and with twelve sons (Tom Welling, Piper Perabo, Hilary Duff..) . He receives a new offer as a trainer of a famous football team . She obtains her dream for the publishing the book titled : ¨Cheaper by the dozen¨. With the new job , they must change from a small city to the big town . Steve Martin ought to keep the familiar order involving in his own home while at the same time training the team .

The picture is pretty entertaining and amusing , the film contains bemusing scenes and continuous laughters and various chuckles with lots of fun . It's a new version of the classic film with similar title featured by Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy adding episodes from ¨Home Alone¨ as when Ashton Kutcher (uncredited) , being the Pier Perabo's boyfriend , suffers numerous jokes and misfortunes in charge of the brothers , likeness to thieves from former film . The picture belongs to numerous family sub-genre whose maxim representation is ¨Yours , mine and ours¨ with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball and recently remade with Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo . Steve Martin , as always , plays as excessive manner , making an authentic recital , if you like Martin's crazy interpretation , you'll enjoy this one . Besides , there appears as sons , known and young actors as Tom Welling (Smallville) , Hilary Duff (LizzyMcGuire) , Piper Perabo (Bar Coyote) and Ashton Kutcher(Guess) . The motion picture was well realized by Shawn Levy and with the same equipment was shot the second part . The flick will appeal to familiar films enthusiasts and Steve Martin fans.

LFotF 21 December 2004

One of the best family movies ever made! Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt are excellent in this modern day adaption of the classic book by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. Although not faithful to the original, this movie keeps the spirit of the original in that it shows family as the most important thing while still laughing at the humor of everyday life.

The supporting cast is excellent! All of the actors playing the Baker kids deliver excellent performances. Most notable are Hilary Duff (The Lizzie McGuire Show) and Tom Welling (Smallville). Hilary is great as always and gets to show that she has true potential as a dramatic actress. I'm not a big fan of Ashton Kutcher, but I must admit that he delivers an absolutely hilarious uncredited supporting part.

This movie is a treat for any family. Most parents will find it acceptable for their kids. The only really offensive portion is some "thematic elements" involving the oldest 20-something daughter's living with a guy. This however is portrayed as an improper thing by her parents. Overall, an excellent and surprisingly clean movie. I strongly recommend this movie to anyone!

cariart 28 March 2004

Cheaper by the Dozen fmovies. While the CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN opening titles credit the authors of the best-selling book the original 1950 film was based on (Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey), don't expect to see a remake of the charming, early-20th century comedy about two efficiency experts (Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy) running a complex but happy family...and this is not a BAD thing!

While the 1950 production is a minor classic, the thrust of the earlier film was with the parents, and oldest daughter (the late Jeanne Crain). Clifton Webb was a gifted, acerbic actor, best known, previously, as 'child hating' author Lynn Belvedere, who proved he was as adept at raising children as he was at EVERYTHING he attempted, in the 1948 hit, SITTING PRETTY. The film was such a success that two sequels were made, and Webb would do several more 'family' comedies before his death in 1966. Playing Frank Bunker Gilbreth, the father of twelve, was a 'natural' for the actor, and the 61-year old Webb 'stole' the film with his self-effacing, 'scientific' approach to child rearing. As his wife, Lillian, Myrna Loy, who had graduated from being 'Nora Charles' in the "Thin Man" series, to being Hollywood's favorite wife/mom, shared Bonnie Hunt's sweetness, sense of organization, and dry humor, but lacked a sexual chemistry with Webb that would have actually produced twelve children (perhaps because of the less 'permissive' time the film was made, or perhaps because of Webb's screen persona). Jeanne Crain, one of 20th Century Fox's favorite ingénues for over six years, had a large fan base, which the studio capitalized on (She was actually second-billed in the film, behind Webb). Her scene at a 1920's prom, with Webb as her 'date', is a film highlight. While the eleven other children were given 'moments' in the film, they barely registered, individually.

Would 2003 audiences have gone to see Martin in a period comedy set eighty years earlier? I doubt it. And had the original story had been simply 'updated', would it have been truly faithful to the source, even in spirit? Unlikely, as so much has changed over the years. Ultimately, the film makers erred, I believe, in using the title of the earlier film, but not in the approach of making a 'family-friendly' comedy about a household of massive proportions.

With Steve Martin, who has become Hollywood's quintessential 'Dad', as a loving, unconventional father/football coach given an opportunity to head his alma mater's team, he displays the same kind of sensitivity that made PARENTHOOD such a wonderful film. Bonnie Hunt, as his wife, is completely believable as a successful author who could handle her large family and still-frisky husband equally well. She is, as always, a treasure!

The children are really the stars of the film, though, and each is special, and individual, from the eldest daughter (Piper Perabo), who, at 22, wants the family to accept the guy she's living with (Ashton Kutcher, in a funny, brief role), to the youngest pair of twins (Brent and Shane Kinsman), who make an art out of wreaking havoc. Tom Welling is quite likable, and proves that he is more than just 'Clark Kent' (For you trivia fans, Kutcher almost got the part of 'Superman' in an upcoming film, which would have put two 'Men of Steel' in the cast). The only discordant note is Hillary Duff's annoyingly brittle second daughter; she may be a '

Spanner-2 31 December 2003

A fairly amusing family comedy, with almost no relation to the book or the earlier film with this title. Steve Martin plays the father of the group of 12 kids who uproots them all to move to the big city where a football coaching job awaits.. suddenly the mom (an amusingly bemused Bonnie Hunt) gets called away on a book tour and dad has to raise all the kids himself. Interesting casting has Piper Perabo (star of the gloriously underrated "Coyote Ugly") as the oldest daughter, Hillary Duff as the teenage daughter, Tom Welling (of TV's "Smallville") as the oldest son and Ashton Kutcher taking an unbilled role as Piper's live-in boyfriend.. and poking fun at himself in the process. The rest of the kids are mostly of the unknown but cute variety,... and the kids get most of the laughs with their various schemes and screw ups along with Martin's reactions to it all. The ending drags a bit as things start to get serious and the family is on the verge of falling apart, but as long as it sticks to the pratfalls the film can be very amusing. GRADE: B

BrandtSponseller 22 January 2005

Tom (Steve Martin) and Kate Baker (Bonnie Hunt) have a Baker's dozen--children, that is. When Tom, a football coach, gets a job offer to coach a college football team just outside of Chicago, and Kate's book about raising 12 children finally gets a publishing offer, they see bright things for their future. The only problem is that their 12 children do not want to move from their rural Illinois home, and things become nearly disastrous when Kate has to leave for a couple weeks to promote her book.

While I didn't enjoy Cheaper By The Dozen as much as the original version of the film from 1950, the 2003 "re-imagining" is still a 9 out of 10 for me (the original was a 10 out of 10 for me). It's a re-imagining rather than a remake because although the overall plot arc has some similarities, these are two very different films, with very different messages, and very different kinds of families. Both are rather cartoonish, which works for me--I don't require much realism in my films. For anyone who is looking for something primarily believable, Cheaper By The Dozen may not fit the bill.

The major change from the original to the new film is a change from control to near-chaos. In the Baker's case, it doesn't take long to realize that the chaos arises from their lack of disciplining their children. While this may not be realistic (surely anyone planning to have a family this large would realize that discipline and control would be necessary to not have one's home destroyed), it does lead to a lot of comic situations, and that's really the point here. Yes, there is a message in the end about putting family first, but what director Shawn Levy really wants you to do is laugh. My wife and I laughed quite a bit while watching the film, so Levy accomplished his goal with us. My only slight complaint on this end was that some of the funniest material involved the eldest Baker daughter's boyfriend, Hank (Ashton Kutcher), and he just wasn't in the film enough. The material about the Shenk's, neighbors of the Baker's, was also funny and a bit underused. This was the reason for lowering my score 1 point.

The rest of the cast is good, although like the original Cheaper By The Dozen, we barely get to know some of the children, but that's understandable when we have to deal with 14 characters as well as ancillary characters. Steve Martin was excellent, as always (I enjoy his work in even his less popularly appreciated films), and although Hilary Duff (as daughter Lorraine Baker) seemed a bit odd in the context of the family, I enjoyed her performance a lot, also. There's something about her that I like, and it's not just her looks.

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