Cheaper By The Dozen Details

It is one of the unwritten rules of making a family film that it should not condescend to its target audience, especially the younger members. Cheaper by the Dozen, though, does it in spades — with an impunity guaranteed by featuring a big star (Steve Martin) and even bigger publicity. It's basically an over-extended sitcom that owes little allegiance to the original book or the delightful 1950 comedy starring Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy. Here the weight of the humour is dumped on Martin, who plays father of 12 children, Tom Baker. When his author wife, Kate (Bonnie Hunt), is called away for a book launch, he has to cope with a dozen unruly offspring as well as the pressures of a demanding new job in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. It's all very amiable, but the jokes are as catchpenny as they come, and, let's face it, contraception could have remedied all the Bakers' problems.

Steve Martin stays in cruise gear as the forgiving, mildly eccentric father of 12 in this lame, ahistoric remake of the... read more on Time Out