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Cheaper by the Dozen
(Reviewed December 6, 2003)
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I like Steve Martin, but I sure can't figure the guy out. I mean, imagine that you're a streetwalking whore who wins the lottery one day. You're rolling in dough, you've moved out of the old
neighborhood, and you're set for life. Would you head back down to Crack Alley every now and then to get laid by filthy, disgusting johns for old times' sake? Even worse, would you do things even
more degrading and disgusting than what you used to do when you first entered the profession?
That about sums up Mr. M's career. The guy is bright, funny and talented. He also is rich enough that he should throw scripts for junk like this movie back in the faces of hack producers who so
obviously are aiming for only the very lowest-common-denominator audience. Martin has to know that movies like this one (and last year's "Bringing Down the House") are sitcom-level garbage, the kind
of relentlessly unfunny crap that he never, ever would watch or enjoy himself.
What's most depressing is that his movies keep getting more worthless. A lot of actors do their most embarrassing work at the beginning of their careers, things like Roger Corman movies or
cheapo horror flicks. But Martin's first movie was the genuinely funny "The Jerk." Which mean he not only backslides when he does these timewasters, he actually appears in movies that are worse than
his first.
Case in point: This vomit-inducingly saccharine, would-be warm-and-fuzzy, laugh-along-with-the-cornball-chaos remake. Martin is the dad, the smugly chilly Bonnie Hunt is the mom, and a
mob of cringe-inducingly fake "Hollywood kid" moppets are their offputting offspring. The children are "humorously" destructive little sociopaths who intersperse bad dialog with bad behavior, the kind of
unamusing capers that would make real-world parents pour Ritalin down the little angels' throats or simply shoot themselves. They wreck the house, they ruin their parents' careers, they make
neighborhood property values drop with their white-trash ADD antics...and one of them is a four-eyed little nerd wif a fwog that he weally, weally wuvs and we're all supposed to feel sorry for him
because he doesn't fit in and mopes around by himself a lot and oh Christ, my lunch is coming up, I think I'm gonna SPEW.
On the way out of this 98-minute descent into hell, I was asked by another writer what I thought of the movie. I replied, "It makes a great argument for post-natal abortion." Then I added, "When
Ashton Kutcher is the best thing in a movie, something is seriously wrong." Man, I was riffin' and be-boppin'. Step aside, Pauline Kael!
Hilary Duff is one of the dozen, and I simply cannot fathom this girl's appeal to America's Youth. She's a walking nothing, with no discernible acting ability or charm. I'm frankly amazed that
she isn't doing "third extra from the left" roles in the backgrounds of low-rated soap operas.
The one thing I liked about the movie was Piper Perabo, who plays the oldest of the "kids" and has moved into an apartment with her boyfriend (Kutcher). And the only reason I liked her is
because she's so skinny and hot, with that extra-wide mouth and those exaggerated features that shouldn't be sexy but somehow are. She has to come home and help out dad when mom goes way on a
two-week book tour. (As everyone who watches television knows, no father possibly can cope with running a household when his better half is away.)
Good God, why am I wasting a Saturday afternoon writing about this horrible, horrible movie?
Suffice it to say, it sucks. And it sucks hard.
Back Row Grade: F
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