What Parents Should Know
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 Media Review
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.
Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing information to help parents make media and entertainment choices for their families.
