Cheaper by the Dozen (2003)
Directed by Shawn Levy
The Baker brood moves to Chicago after patriarch Tom gets a job coaching football at Northwestern University, forcing his writer wife, Kate, and the couple's 12 children to make a major adjustment. The transition works well until work demands pull the parents away from home, leaving the kids bored -- and increasingly mischievous.
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What critics compared Cheaper by the Dozen to
The long line of Disney intellectual-property revisits begins in earnest with a new “Cheaper By The Dozen,” based on the 2003 release, featuring Gabrielle Union, Zach Braff and Erika Christensen, streaming on Disney Plus.
Whether "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" has what it takes to live past its first entry is still up in the air, but, as adapted from Rick Riordan's novel by director Chris Columbus (himself director of 2001's " Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone " and 2002's " Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ") and screenwriter Craig Titley (2003's " Cheaper by the Dozen "), it certainly stands as a promising start.
That it took three guys to merely come up with the plot baffles science, though it’s perhaps explained by the fact that this unholy trio consisted of Rodkey, Joel Cohen (Cheaper by the Dozen and both Garfield movies) and Cohen’s partner in perfidy Alex Sokolow.
Shawn Levy, who directed such lucrative disasters as the Steve Martin remakes of The Pink Panther and Cheaper by the Dozen , has been brought in by Steven Spielberg to make this conflation of The Champ (the 1931 tearjerker about a drunken boxer redeemed by his long-estranged son, Jackie Cooper) and Rollerball , the futuristic action flick built around a violent popular sport.
Anyone familiar with the work of Shawn Levy — the commercialism auteur behind films like Night at the Museum and Cheaper by the Dozen — won’t have their outlook on life remodeled by the revelation that with his latest film, he’s got very little to say.
Almost all movies are underlain by one formula or another, but director Shawn Levy (“Night at the Museum,” “Cheaper by the Dozen”) allows you to see the entire movie stretch before you as plainly as a stretch of West Texas highway from the minute the boy, Max, shows up and is revealed to be a smart-mouthed but lovable scamp.
Alas, Shawn Levy, the genius behind Night at the Museum, The Pink Panther, and Cheaper by the Dozen directed this cynical piece of bathetic crap and his sticky, syrup-coated paws are all over it, from the movie's flat, unimaginative staging to its absolute inability to be non-didactic in its presentation.
Director Shawn Levy, whose box-office hits give critics meltdowns (Cheaper By the Dozen, The Pink Panther, both Night at the Museum movies), puts frisky energy into the fights, especially when Charlie and son take a junk-pile robot named Atom and build him into a contender.
However, the biggest failing of "Real Steel" is that director Shawn Levy, the auteur of such cinematic classics as "A Night at the Museum" and the remakes of "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "The Pink Panther," completely fails at presenting us with a vision of the near-future that is even remotely convincing--one where, to judge by the ordinariness of the surroundings, there appears to have been no other technical innovations of note other than the rapid advancement in giant ass-kicking robot technology, one where, to judge by the astonishment that the shadow function inspires, in which the Wii never existed and one where, to judge by all the blatant product placement shots of it being guzzled by the little brat, Dr. Pepper apparently emerged as the surprise victor of the cola wars.
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With a lengthier, though unimpressive, list of credits, Craig Titley (the big screen version of Scooby Doo, Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequel) turned out a competent though divergent screenplay for the first film.
Shawn Levy has mostly built a career out of innocuous action comedies that, while not exactly critical darlings, have raked in big box office returns: the Night at the Museum trilogy, Cheaper by the Dozen , The Pink Panther , the list goes on.
Director Shawn Levy, a veteran of dumb comedies such as "Night at the Museum" and "Cheaper by the Dozen," levels up his game considerably, telling a fascinating, insightful tale that delivers food for thought as well as laughs.
Levy, a veteran director of warm-hearted comedies (the “Night at the Museum” movies, “Cheaper by the Dozen”), has a light touch and he juggles the wildlife of the gaming world — a “Grand Theft Auto”-like metropolis — as adeptly as he did that of the Natural History Museum.
It's a shame you know him only as the anything-for-a-buck Hollywood hack from remakes of The Out-of-Towners, Cheaper by the Dozen and The Pink Panther.
Not that we should be surprised by this: it's directed by Shawn Levy, whose anything-for-a-buck track record includes the Cheaper By The Dozen and Pink Panther remakes.
Levy, who cut his directorial teeth on Disney TV series before going on to steward the lucrative “Night at the Museum” and “Cheaper by the Dozen” franchises, doesn’t seem to have a cynical or mean-spirited bone in his filmmaking body, and there’s something finally disarming about “The Internship’s” boundless optimism, its belief in the possibility of starting over at 40, and its vision of Google as something like the world’s biggest mom-and-pop business.
The cruddy kid comedy "Big Fat Liar," the unwanted remakes of "Cheaper by the Dozen" and "The Pink Panther," two overstuffed yet underwritten "Night at the Museum" flicks — those are the credits, folks.