Cheaper by the Dozen
DISNEYNot just Disney’s new business strategy, but also the name of their latest remake. Cheaper by the Dozen tries so desperately to clamour for all the energy and horribly dated choices made by the Steve Martin original that it completely misses the point. The frantic necessity of raising so many children is lost on the Zach Braff remake. But so much else is lost along the way, including common decency, a desire to turn a story with interest and a complete lack of interest in the characters that shape up this miserable comedy experience. The genre is dead. It was not the cancel culture that killed it as many proclaim, but a complete ineffectiveness brought on by the broadest pool of pop culture references and meme-worthy, hashtag moments.
Cheaper by the Dozen does feel like studio heads playing catch up with themselves. Safely made family content becomes tamer as the years dwindle by, and the Braff-led reimagining of Cheaper by the Dozen is a sickeningly poor one that depends on the off-screen tragedies of characters never met to drive home an emotional angle. It doesn’t work. For all the positives that come from showing a blended family and giving that the representation not seen in film so far, it is a butchering like no other. Representation may be important, but it is equally important to do it right and not slaughter it for the sake of plot sanctity. Trust Disney to make it such a throwaway bit of nonsense. No surprise.
What is surprising though is the relative quality of the cast. No actor too great could ever deal with this horrendous script or asinine direction from Gail Lerner, though. Eventually, Disney will develop a robotic camera that captures the shot-reverse-shot and pratfall comic patterns that always have the camera positioned a bit too low and a little too close to the characters. But until then, poor suckers just hoping to breach the fold and cement their legacy are churned up and out by the big machine that necessitates the making of Cheaper by the Dozen and the likes that will follow it. Even projects based on the original texts cannot be salvaged by an industry hellbent on stuffing a cast full of Google-optimised search results and moments that will leave parents scratching their heads, teenagers cringing at the introduction of some pop culture alley and young children puzzled because they don’t know what a TikTok is.
Car crash cinema is one thing, but Cheaper by the Dozen is a train wreck spectacle unfurling like no other. For those that care to struggle through, all there is here is a pitiful Braff performance being gaslighted because he won't serve breakfast when it’s close to the lunch hour. He still has that bouncy charm that steered him through Scrubs all those years ago, but Disney is hellbent on stomping that out of him. He is, as one customer says, “the Willy Wonka of sauces,” and he does hold that zany, wild energy to him. Braff has kept that intact for decades and weathered the storm well, but Cheaper by the Dozen’s remake saps all the charm and comedy out of the underlying family reliance of the Steve Martin original and replaces it with ham-fisted notions of family meetings and whiny teens.