1/5
The new Baker family of “Cheaper by the Dozen” poses in front of their new home. Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
LOS ANGELES, March 17 (UPI) — The 2003 Cheaper by the Dozen is hardly Steve Martin’s finest work. With relatively low expectations, the new Cheaper By the Dozen, premiering Friday on Disney+, still manages to underwhelm.
Though based on the memoir by the Gilbreth siblings, Cheaper By the Dozen retains the Baker family name from the Martin movie. Zoey (Gabrielle Union) and Paul (Zach Braff) introduce their family members, but few ever grow beyond the superficial trait they’re assigned in the introduction.
The updated Baker family tries as best to represent as diverse a swath of family types as it can. While well-intentioned, it underserves just about all of them.
Zoey and Paul already are a blended family in the second marriage for both. Paul’s ex (Erica Christensen) babysits the kids, and Zoey’s ex-husband and ex-NBA star Dom (Timon Kyle Durrett) intimidates Paul with his wealth.
Zoey and Paul adopted Haresh (Aryan Simhadri) when his parents died in an automobile accident.
Their own kids include Lego and comic book fan DJ (Andre Robinson), basketball prodigy Deja (Journee Brown), influencer Ella (Kylie Rogers), punk rocker Harley (Caylee Blosenski), who uses a wheelchair, and four younger kids the parents lump together as “The Littles.”
This Cheaper By the Dozen feels like a TV series crammed into a movie. It feels like there was, at one time, a plan for a whole season of episodes, but now each episode is reduced to a single scene.
The screenplay — credited to Kenya Barris and Jennifer Rice-Genzuk, with story credited to both, along with Craig Titley — has issues on its mind. The execution has no insight for anything more than lip service.
Paul takes a business opportunity to afford a bigger house in a neighborhood in which the neighbors racially profile Zoey. The film keeps introducing new neighbors to say offensive things.
It’s not enough just to point out that racism exists. If the film just inserts dialogue about racial profiling, it doesn’t really capture what a blended family, or any Black person really goes through.
Deja has a strong subplot, but the rest of the kids get sporadic attention and superficial scenes. DJ has a crush, and Haresh faces racism at their new school.
Both could be worthwhile storylines if they had any time to develop. By the time the film returns to those subplots, they’ve skipped to the resolution.
Other characters receive even less, which is a shame because the young cast is up to the task. Braff and Union are good with the kids, too.
Late in the movie, an incident with Paul’s off-screen sister leads to yet another new subplot that might be a spoiler to reveal. How many new plots is this movie introducing halfway through the film?
There are enough references to The Fast and the Furious and TikTok to cement Cheaper by the Dozen 2022 in this decade. But when Paul does a TikTok dance with the high school cheer squad, it already feels like an outdated generation gap joke. Other physical comedy bits feel labored and don’t really pay off.
The Gilbreths published their family story in 1948. Theoretically there could be a new movie about a large family for each generation. Hopefully, the next one finally will be good.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001 and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
