Review of Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005) by Rebecca H — 27 Feb 2009

So this film is about children moving away from home, and how you have to let them go, despite the moral of the first film being no one can ever leave, and they're evil if they try.

As usual there are far too many characters. We have the parents, twelve offspring, plus one partner and a psychotic dog that would clearly have been put down by now, then in the rival family two parents and eight children. Unsurprisingly, most get no development, lines or scenes.

Somehow the eldest Baker daughter is in a relationship and heavily pregnant, despite having just broken up a serious relationship at the end of the previous film. This quick and unlikely progress is presumably because she made sure she got knocked up as soon as she met this boyfriend, so her horrible siblings couldn't try to murder this one.

The repetitive plot seems to consist of watching father Tom's efforts to give his family one last holiday together constantly fail, stuck together with random slapstick scenes that have nothing to do with anything and lack consequences, while endlessly comparing the competitive fathers, despite the whole point being they are very different, as if this is making some deep point. But it all sorts itself out in time for a schmaltzy ending, following the 'big problems solve small problems' pattern of the first film.

Despite some offensive anti-gay and disabled jokes, this is the superior film to the first, because it isn't gruelling. This is a harmless family comedy, watchable if you want no mental stimulation or strong enjoyment of any kind. Whereas Cheaper By The Dozen was a slow, nasty slaughter of people's dreams.