A fairly amusing family comedy, with almost no relation to the book or the earlier film with this title. Steve Martin plays the father of the group of 12 kids who uproots them all to move to the big city where a football coaching job awaits.. suddenly the mom (an amusingly bemused Bonnie Hunt) gets called away on a book tour and dad has to raise all the kids himself. Interesting casting has Piper Perabo (star of the gloriously underrated "Coyote Ugly") as the oldest daughter, Hillary Duff as the teenage daughter, Tom Welling (of TV's "Smallville") as the oldest son and Ashton Kutcher taking an unbilled role as Piper's live-in boyfriend.. and poking fun at himself in the process. The rest of the kids are mostly of the unknown but cute variety,... and the kids get most of the laughs with their various schemes and screw ups along with Martin's reactions to it all. The ending drags a bit as things start to get serious and the family is on the verge of falling apart, but as long as it sticks to the pratfalls the film can be very amusing. GRADE: B
Review of Cheaper by the Dozen
