Cheaper by the Dozen: Critic Reviews

A sprightly, shiny, updated fantasy of family togetherness and teamwork.

This remake of the 1950 movie is a bubbling crockpot of farcical mush to warm the tummies of anyone who really and truly misses The Brady Bunch.

So calculatedly cast with popular kid stars that it seems a focus group was guiding all the choices.

Martin and Hunt give the production a mellow warmth. And Levy has cast an appealingly diverse bunch of kids to play the young Bakers.

This is a movie that knows its audience and realizes it doesn't need much of a story to hit that audience, literally, where it lives.

Most of Tom and Kate Baker's 12 children seem to have been flown in from a casting office in Burbank.

Adapted from the 1949 memoir by two children of pioneering efficiency experts Frank and Lilliann Gilbreth, the film now has a title that doesn't really make sense, but it gets modern-day mileage for its even more improbable premise.

There is not a frame of Cheaper that doesn't feel contrived. It fails the most fundamental test of movie logic.

From playful mugging to tender affection, Martin exudes a strong star persona, and he and Hunt share romantic warmth despite a dearth of alone time.

Formulas are essential for any family of 12 children. Cheaper by the Dozen follows an abundance of formulas, all used before.

Hollywood has tried too hard, attempting to re-create organic family life through excessive artificiality.

Lighthearted fun, providing little character bits for all of the family members.

In a culture that tells us we can have it all -- a career, financial security and a family -- Cheaper by the Dozen seems a tad anachronistic.

Indistinguishable from an Afterschool Special.

You don't so much watch this witless, charmless, pointless fiasco as sit hostage, waiting for it to end.

Silly, noisy, comforting fun.

Belongs to that old Hollywood genus and species -- comedicus genericus.

Knows no tone between schmaltzy / gooey and slapstick / gross-out.

All you need to know about the slapdash, bogus kiddie flick Cheaper by the Dozen can be summed up by the fact that Ashton Kutcher, making a glorified cameo as a narcissistic model-slash- actor, is the best thing in it.

It wastes Hunt's whiplash-quick timing and further reduces the once-wild, once-crazy Martin to the generic father figure he has collected checks for in too many recent movies.

We are not only asked to find the barbarian Baker brood a model of familial loyalty and unconditional devotion, we're also asked to regard with contempt everyone else who does not share the Bakers' unbridled consumerist anarchy.

Fifty-three years of progress later, and this typifies the stuff that families have come to expect in the good name of entertainment -- the laughs are way down, but the decibel level has gone through the roof.

The laughs are strictly budgeted in this TV-tuned family outing.

Remake bears no resemblance to the 1950 original.