Cheaper by the Dozen

Reviewed by:
Ben Goldstein

In possibly the most charming movie of the holiday season, Steve Martin plays a lovable football coach named Tom Baker who, dog gone it, will not use contraception! After forcing his long-suffering wife, Kate (Bonnie Hunt), to cast aside her own ambitions and raise his 12 ill-mannered children—which include Smallville’s 26-year-old Tom Welling playing a high-school student, Nickelodeon jailbait Hilary Duff, and one of the pop-locking brats from Missy Elliott’s “Work It” video—Tom lands his dream job of coaching his alma mater’s football team and moves the Baker clan out of the sticks and into a ritzier suburb. Directly afterward, Kate sells her book about raising 12 kids and makes a totally understandable escape from her domestic prison by going on a two-week book tour, plunging the family into unspeakable chaos. It wouldn’t seem like there’d be much humor or goodwill in a movie that revolves around a family being branded as outcasts by their snobbish community and an overtaxed father continuously in danger of losing his job, but Cheaper by the Dozen pulls through anyway, especially in a brutal scene in which the Bakers’ dog starts relentlessly gnawing on Ashton Kutcher’s crotch. All in all, it’s a solid family comedy with a very important holiday message: Always, always use condoms.

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