Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)

Cheaper by the Dozen arrives from 2003, directed by Shawn Levy, with Steve Martin as a football coach who relocates twelve children and one patient wife to Evanston for a job at his alma mater. It is a remake of a 1950 film, itself drawn from a semi-autobiographical book by the Gilbreth siblings, though the resemblance extends about as far as the title and the headcount. Half a century of source material has been politely misplaced.

The film's social conscience is of the mildest vintage. Kate Baker writes a book, departs on a national tour, and returns when the household collapses. Tom eventually resigns his coaching post to spend more time at home. A viewer determined to locate a statement about working mothers could construct one, but the film offers scheduling problems, not an argument. The Baker family is entirely white, and the film has no interest in commenting on that. There is no racial consciousness, no environmental anxiety, no class critique, no engagement with body image or neurodivergence. The minority performers in supporting parts, a publisher here, a teacher there, arrive without comment and depart without consequence. The only sermon on offer is the soft, family-first variety: parents should prioritize their children. Sentiment carries it, not a raised finger.

All of this places the film in a comfortable, unremarkable register. It is a studio comedy that wants to be liked, and audiences largely obliged, critics less so, with a twenty-five percent approval and a collective shrug. Ashton Kutcher earned a Razzie nomination for his trouble. The cultural footprint is modest and the ideological one smaller still. As a specimen of its era's social awareness, it sits in the cellar, not from any hostility toward progressive ideas but from a complete absence of them. There is nothing here to argue with and nothing to celebrate. We file it accordingly.