'Dozen' adds up to too many cheap shots

Thursday, December 25, 2003

By Ron Weiskind, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I'm old enough (consarn it) to remember the original movie version of "Cheaper by the Dozen," which starred Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy. As a kid, I thought it was pretty funny. As a father, I envy how Webb's character ruled the roost. His children obeyed and (sigh) didn't sass back, much less treat you like the real-world version of Homer Simpson.

	"Cheaper by the Dozen" RATING: PG for language and some thematic elements. STARRING: Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Hilary Duff, Piper Perabo. DIRECTOR: Shawn Levy.

Still, it could be worse. I could be Steve Martin in the remake of "Cheaper by the Dozen," whose kids treat him like Judas for daring to take his dream job at the cost of uprooting the family even though, as he points out, he would make enough money to stop these wretches from their endless whining about having to wear hand-me-downs.

As Charlie Sheen really once said in a movie, "Pack your bags. We're going on a guilt trip." Or, to be precise, 12 of them.

Oh, and did I mention this dirty dozen seems to have been trained in destructive behavior by the Saddam fedayeen?

Oh, yeah, this is what we want for Christmas, a movie to remind us how bratty our kids could turn out while teaching them lessons in anarchy.

Still, we can't give them all the blame. Martin's character, Tom Baker, coaches football at some Podunk college in Midland, Ill. When he is offered the chance to coach his alma mater, a big-time school in Chicago, he wants to jump at it but is sensitive enough to run it by the family.

They respond as if he just asked them to jump off the Sears tower. By movie's end, I was ready to push them.

Still, I would like to think a successful football coach would know enough about discipline to keep some semblance of order among his kids. If his team were as unruly as his family, it wouldn't win so much as a coin toss.

Maybe it only works when Mom is around. After the Bakers move to Chicago and Tom starts his new, more demanding job, wife Kate (Bonnie Hunt) finds out she's sold her book, an account about raising 12 kids called "Cheaper by the Dozen."

She has to fly to New York to sign papers and do publicity, leaving Tom alone to juggle his resentful children along with the pressures of his new job.

Did you ever wonder what would happen if one of the Flying Karamazov Brothers happened to miss one of those chain saws in midair? The result might be something like the chaos at the Baker households (before and after): a frog flopping into the scrambled eggs, a chandelier falling more than once from the ceiling, and kids climbing the drainpipes, beaning a neighbor kid with a hockey puck (Tom falls on him later, don't ask) and letting a snake loose at a birthday party.

They actively plot against the vain actor boyfriend (an uncredited Ashton Kutcher) of oldest sister Nora (Piper Perabo) by arranging for him to trip and fall into the wading pool, drying his wet pants in a bowl of meat and then unleashing the dog on him. OK, the guy's no prize, but these aren't exactly the Waltons, either.

Martin and Hunt, two comic pros, try their best, but they stand little chance against this onslaught.

Director Shawn Levy must have thought he was making "Home Alone," although no one in the movie ever is. He and Sam Harper, one of the screenwriters, share the insipid comedy "Just Married" among their, uh, credits.

The other screenwriters are Joel Cohen, not to be confused with either of the Coen brothers, and Alec Sokolow, who counts among his family friends and childhood influences Abbie Hoffman and Dr. Timothy Leary. Don't trust anyone over 30 and drive Dad into dropping acid?

Or maybe it's just producer Robert Simonds, responsible for such swill as "Problem Child," "Billy Madison," "Half Baked," "The Adventures of Joe Dirt" and "Corky Romano."

He's working on a pretty cheap dozen himself.

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