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| Tuesday, April 13, 2004 | (No comments posted.)
What is it with me and expectations? It seems that I always expect more or less from a movie than I actually get. Take "Cheaper by the Dozen," for example. I was expecting a lot of laughs, but not much of a plot. And I got the exact opposite of what I thought it would be like. I can count the number of times I laughed on just one hand, but it actually had a plot, and it was a serious one. The movie dealt with money problems, feeling excluded, moving to a new location and much more.
Steve Martin plays Tom Baker, a football coach with big dreams of both coaching at Northwestern and raising his 12 kids. But juggling work and family life is tough, especially when there are 12 kids to watch over. Of course money is scarce and the thought of moving to a new city begins to sound better and better after hearing complaints that the kids have to wear hand-me-downs and they don't have enough cars. Although leaving their beloved home is depressing, they decide to move anyway.
In their new town near Chicago, they don't seem to fit in. They are loud, outgoing and not stuck-up, unlike many of the other people who live there. But things take a turn for the worse when the mother, played by Bonnie Hunt, goes to New York to sell her book. Twelve kids home alone with their working dad for two weeks is just a complex recipe for trouble. It's hard to find a baby-sitter who can handle a family that large, so that leaves only one option: taking work home. Now, taking work home doesn't sound that bad, does it? What usually comes to mind is a couple of papers, but for Tom Baker, it means taking the entire football team home. Now, his already out-of-control home has just gotten an energy boost.
"Cheaper by the Dozen" is a good family movie. It's not as funny as I would have hoped, but at least it has a decent plot to make up for it. I have mixed feelings about it. I didn't really care for it, yet I watched it three times already. I think it's because I enjoy watching my 4-year-old brother laugh hysterically at the parts that really aren't that funny. Maybe he laughs because he doesn't understand what's going on, or maybe he laughs because he's trying to add excitement to a somewhat boring film. I think what I did was the second one -- I laughed because I felt I needed to add excitement.
Grade: C
Starring: Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Hilary Duff, Tom Welling, Piper Perabo
Synopsis: "Cheaper by the Dozen" had few laughs and focused mostly on more serious issues.
Opinions expressed solely are those of the writer. Melissa Kirincic is a freshman at Munster High School.
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