Cheaper by the Dozen

I decided to give it one star for every genuine, heart-felt scene that I remember from this film. It's all I can do not to take every one of those stars back for the absolutely horrendous character of the mother, who says she doesn't want to make a big deal of stuff while she's in the middle of actively turning every little misunderstanding or misspoken word into a huge, annoying race issue. She's like the Karen for a new age of PC politics. She's the type of character who decides that being reminded about the gated community's noise rules is because she's black, and not because of the half a dozen children under the age of 6 that are screaming at the top of their lungs behind them.

A great cast, but the story fell short for me. Overall, the movie just lacks vision. I think more could have been done with the family as a team at the restaurant. The naughts movies do a better job of full family scenes. Each kid's problems seem very separate from the group as a whole. It just seemed like a cookie-cutter copy of the first Steve Martin movie with an arch about bullying, an arch about twins being twins, and an arch about the outcast kid who isn't understood by anyone. The live-in other adults seems like a way to waste time instead of focusing on the family itself. The book does a great job of stirring the pot when it comes to ingenuity and creativity when it comes to the family as a whole. Just read the book and get inspired from that before making the movie. Try to make therbligs relevant again is all I'm saying. Sorry to hear Disney Plus is throwing this in the vault, though. It didn't really have much time in the limelight. P.S., I will say I enjoyed the reference to Gabrielle Union having a rich sportsperson husband.