CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (2003) *** This isn't realy what you expect from Steve Martin: heartfelt and overtly unambitious. He's also a football coach, which should raise warning signs, as should the suggestively commercial casting of teen television stars Hilary Duff and Tom Welling. If all of these disturb you, if they make you wary and suspicious, if you're pretty sure that you wouldn't like the movie without even seeing it, then you think too much. Shawn Levy delivers a film just about as natural as films get. Martin and Bonnie Hunt encounter situations and dilemmas so universal that any parent (of even one young nuisance, I mean pride and joy) can easily identify. Martin and Hunt forego the temptation to turn their characters into saints and martyrs, though they stay within shouting distance of the former; all the better to inspire by example. It's more an associate film to the 1950 original than a remake. The social currents that inhibit strong family ties (mainly career) are encountered without prosylitizing, and authentic family values are championed without going on about it. Martin is so effective at keeping himself reigned in that you don't even think about it, even when he slips a little extra sugar into the best smiles and lines. Ashton Kutcher, on the other hand, is allowed to go entirely overboard as a boyfriend/model, with self-indulgence suggesting that he, too, may someday be a wild and crazy guy. What an awful cad! In any event, what a nice family (even if the Oprah people didn't think so)! It's nice when there's a nice film about nice people, that works nicely.
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