Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005)

(On Cable TV, April 2019) I’m not sure there’s anything meaningful to say about Cheaper by the Dozen 2. It’s very much what it wants to be: a sequel to the 2003 Steve Martin version of Cheaper by the Dozen, a lowest-common-denominator family comedy working in the broadest possible comic register. While the result will be a hit for kids, anyone over the age of eight is likely to be bored by the obvious jokes you can see coming from miles away, the obvious plot threads and the complete lack of surprise. It is what it wants to be—an innocuous family comedy with a nostalgic bent, far too many characters to properly develop beyond a few gags, with a familiar soundtrack telling us what to feel if we’re not too sure. Martin himself seems to be daring himself to mug it up as widely as possible, perhaps in a kind of performance art piece echoing the kind of Dadaistic stand-up he did earlier in his career. It is fun to see Eugene Levy also hamming it up as an antagonist, and a few familiar names in smaller roles. Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is not much, but then again—if you start watching a sequel, you know what to expect, for better or for worse.