Common Sense Note
Parents should know that the movie includes slapsticky roughhousing and stupid antics, including a clambake disrupted by fireworks and a tennis game disrupted by two young boys careening in a golf cart. Women (especially Carmen Electra) wear tight tops, with several shots focused on cleavage. There is homophobic humor and mild profanity. Parents aren't portrayed in the best light; fathers engage in obnoxious, childish competition.
Families can talk about the exaggerated competitiveness between the two fathers. How do the dads lose sight of their kids' interests? How do their wives and children see getting along as more fun than winning contests? How does the movie celebrate individuality in contrast to conformity?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Adam Shankman's unevenly paced, uninspired CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 2 is set in summertime. This means a couple of things: one, its release is off season and two, college football coach Tom (Steve Martin) is off work. The first is unexplained. The second occasions Tom's competition with the unspeakably annoying Jimmy Murtaugh (Eugene Levy), as the childhood rivals end up at the same lakeside campground. Self-conscious nerd Jimmy lords it over Tom that he's rich and married to trophy wife number three, Sarina (Carmen Electra).
Tom soon turns as overbearing as Jimmy. Whereas he was sweet and bungling in the first film, here he's just manic and inept, ignoring longsuffering wife Kate (Bonnie Hunt) when she begs him not to set his kids to compete against Jimmy's brood. While the dads arrange for any number of impromptu challenges (campfire singing, waterskiing, volley ball, tennis), the children are relegated to providing reaction shots, even as they try to distance themselves from their fathers' shenanigans.
Nora (Piper Perabo), apparently abandoned by former beau Hank (Ashton Kutcher, who clearly has better, more lucrative, less painful things to do now) is here hitched up with good-looking dullard Bud (Jonathan Bennett). Charlie develops an interest in Murtaugh's daughter, the smart, beautiful, tattooed, and bikinied Anne (Jaime King). And Lorraine (Hilary Duff) is planning on an internship with Allure magazine in New York.
Even tomboy Sarah (Alyson Stoner), usually up for her dad's distractions, is now more interested in a date with Murtaugh's son Eliot (Taylor Lautner). Unable to stand it, Tom and Jimmy both hide out in the movie theater balcony, spying on the kids. When Tom shows Jimmy the move where you yawn-n-stretch to put your arm around your date, they're mistaken for a gay couple by phobic fellow theatergoers ("Disgusting!"), leading to yet another spastic-dad joke. Dangling from the balcony during the ensuing mini-melee, Tom horrifies Sarah and demonstrates once again that he's a sensationally incompetent parent. It's no wonder that his kids are all outgrowing him.
Families who like family comedies may prefer the original Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), or if you must, Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), as well as Home Alone or Toy Story, both better films involving similar hijinks.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentCarmen Electra wears tight tops; Bonnie Hunt borrows t-shirt that reads " Mama" jokes about awkwardness of preteen romance; dads act out homosexual attraction, soilciting homophobic responses; joke about " hormonal pregnant woman." |
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ViolenceStupid antics involving explosions (fireworks); rough sports-play (tennis, waterskiing, log-rolling that ends when dad falls and his crotch hits the log); one dad tells kid athletes to " on their throats and press down." |
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LanguageMild language. |
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Social BehaviorObnoxious, childish competition between two dads leads to splatty comedy and arguments; a girl shoplifts makeup; some kids pull pranks or pout/visibly resent their fathers' bad behaviors. |
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CommercialismLife cereal, Allure magazine, Nike t-shirt, Napoleon Dynamite<> poster in a movie theater. |
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