BEFORE: We got out to the Long Island Fair yesterday, since I'm not going to get another trip to the Texas State Fair in Dallas this year (two years in a row was probably enough) and watching episodes of "Carnival Eats" makes me long for some fried festival food. I knew the Long Island Fair probably wasn't going to measure up to the one in Texas, but I was still underwhelmed since there just wasn't that much to DO there, they had no carnival rides or games, just a recreation of a colonial Long Island Village, a brass band concert, a diving show, an equestrian drill team and some pig racing. (OK, there were a couple other things, like a BMX bike show, needlework and other craft displays, and a petting zoo, but nothing else I was interested in.). Even the food was a bit disappointing, since the booths were run by one catering company, so there was no competition or hustle among the vendors to come up with original fairground treats - I just had a turkey leg, a pot roast sandwich and an ice cream bar from a truck.
Still, it was probably good for me to get outdoors, and get some walking in on the weekend, I probably spend too many weekends just watching TV and movies at home.
Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt carry over from "Cheaper By the Dozen", and so do at least 12 others, I think. I wonder if that's some kind of record for me, having 14 actors linking two films...
THE PLOT: The Bakers, while on vacation, find themselves competing with a rival family of eight children.
AFTER: My timing here couldn't be better, even though this can't really count as a "back to school" film, the plot revolves around Tom Baker getting his family together for one last vacation together before his third child moves away to NYC. That seems like an odd thing to commemmorate, like isn't he still going to take vacations with the other nine kids? And they're going to get easier to plan and pay for once more kids start aging out of the program. But whatever. It's a little odd that the film starts in June (?) with his daughter's graduation and then suddenly jumps ahead to their Labor Day vacation in September. Great for my viewing period as a tie-in, but a bit weird for the structure of the film.
The younger kids, for some reason, don't want to waste their summer in Wisconsin, but this feels very clunky too, since the vacation isn't until September. This means they've got half of June, all of July and most of August to do whatever they want, so it seems like a small price to pay, spending only one week (or two, this is unclear) at the end of the summer with Mom and Dad by the lake. And it's weird that I've seen something this in two movies in one week, the parents in "Toy Story 4" also wanted a late-summer road trip before school started, so I guess maybe this is a thing? I personally don't get it, I mean, you've got all summer to take a damn vacation, why wait until the last week? But hey, I'm in the habit of working through the summer and taking a week off in October. Part of that has to do with the weather and where we've been traveling lately, like I'd rather go down South or out to Vegas in October when things cool off a bit.
I think if global warming continues, we're going to see some kind of shift in people's vacation patterns. This summer, even in NYC, it was largely too hot to do any fun outdoor activities, most days I just wanted to stay indoors with the A/C on. So I can't even imagine being outside in Florida or some place like New Mexico during July or August, how do people there keep from spontaneously combusting? If I took a summer vacation now I'd want to head up north to Canada or maybe even Alaska, that might be quite comfortable. So even though for decades we've associated summer with vacation time, as a society we might want to start rethinking that. Who wants to play outdoor sports or go camping or hiking when it's over a hundred degrees? For that matter, it might be time to take a look at living in mountain states like Colorado or Utah. I'd say Greenland's looking pretty nice, but here's an insider tip, most of Greenland's probably going to MELT in a decade or so, so I don't think that's going to be a viable option. Not much actual LAND in Greenland, so I can't understand why our President was interested in buying it - oh, right, he's an idiot.
But this film came out in 2005, back when people didn't know how bad climage change was going to get, and still thought that we could recycle our way out of it. (Now, of course, we know that's not true...). The Bakers load up their van and trailer with kids and get their two adult children to meet them at the old lake house, which they've rented many times in the past, only they never mentioned it until the sequel demanded it. (Screenwriters are clever like that, here they just added backstory about the vacation home, the long-running rivalry with another large family, and a packrat in the house that's been stealing items from the family for longer than a rat's normal lifespan).
Some things have changed since the Baker's last vacation, the father of the rival family has bought up most of the lakefront property and erected a "members only" club, and some things haven't, since Tom Baker still hasn't learned to listen to his kids or take their needs into consideration. Once again, it becomes all about HIM as he tries to get back at his stuffy rival and then win some kind of Family Cup. Again, the script can't seem to decide if this is a recurring annual event at this lake, or just an occasion for these two familes to compete against each other, it's never made clear. It almost seems like they revived this dead tradition JUST to continue the bitter rivalry between the two father figures (sure, there are other families competing, but come on, they haven't got a chance.).
The way the whole competition thing works is extremely clunky at best. How is it fair for a canoe filled with 8 kids to compete against a canoe filled with 12? I can't even imagine how to calculate the advantage gained by having more people rowing balanced against the disadvantage of that canoe having more weight in it. But I've got to figure it's like racing a two-man bobsled against a four-man one, no matter who wins, you can't call that a clean victory because you changed the variables. There are SO many things like this in the film that don't make any sense. Why would a family rent a lake house with bedrooms for everyone inside, and then camp outside in tents? OK, just the father wanted to do that, but it's unfathomable from any story angle. Plus there are at least two potential romantic relationships between the children from the two families, why isn't this enough for the patriarchs to see that the families should be friendly with each other, and not rivals?
All of these are potential NITPICK POINTS, but none bigger than this one - why would anyone allow a child with a backpack FULL of fireworks (the bag is always open, firework labels clearly visible inside at all times, plus giant fireworks STICKING OUT of the bag) to attend a party at the club? Ugh, this is either a horrendous example of hands-off parenting or the director just needed to justify an explosion-filled accident at the party. But the ends don't justify the means, and it's the most blatant example of telegraphing ever. OK, this leads to a discussion over whether it's better to be a disciplinarian as a parent (one family's father is, the other obviously isn't) but then how does winning the Family Cup even settle THAT argument? Hey, we beat you at the egg toss and the three-legged race, so clearly our style of parenting is superior? That doesn't logically follow. It's just another chance for Tom Baker to apply his (alleged) coaching skills to his children, and as we saw in the first film, that just doesn't work.
Then, just when most of the Baker family refuses to compete, after they all realize that Tom's competitive nature and parenting style is tearing the family apart, the family does a complete 180 after finding their old team flag. Huh? That should have been a horrible reminder of the way the family USED to be, what got them into trouble in the first place, but instead it rallies them to join their father and compete in the events, when they've just SEEN what lies down that dark road. Why the hell would they want to backslide into their old ways, when they just got themselves OFF of that treadmill that goes nowhere?
Points, though, for coming up with an innovative story solution to get out of the dead-end bind at the end (or maybe the screenwriters realized that both winning AND losing the competition were narrative dead ends). Instead a last-minute complication forces the two families to work together to reach the denouement. But it's about the best ending this could have had, and carries more emotion, too. I'm also glad to see that Nora dropped that egotistical actor boyfriend she was living with and instead married a more solid guy who cares about something other than himself. OK, he's no Ashton Kutcher, but if he looks a bit familiar, he went on to host three or four seasons of "Cake Wars".
Also starring Piper Perabo, Tom Welling, Hilary Duff, Kevin G. Schmidt, Alyson Stoner, Jacob Smith, Forrest Landis, Morgan York, Liliana Mumy, Blake Woodruff, Brent Kinsman, Shane Kinsman (all carrying over from "Cheaper By the Dozen"), Eugene Levy (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Carmen Electra (last seen in "American Dreamz"), Jonathan Bennett (last seen in "Mean Girls"), Shawn Roberts (last seen in xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Jaime King (last seen in "Ocean's Eight"), Robbie Amell, Melanie Tonello (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Taylor Lautner (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6") , Madison Fitzpatrick, Courtney Fitzpatrick, Alexander Conti, Peter Keleghan, William Copeland, with cameos from Ben Falcone (last seen in "Office Christmas Party"), Kathryn Joosten (last seen in "Hostage"), Adam Shankman, Shawn Levy (OK, make that 15 people carrying over.)
RATING: 5 out of 10 roasted marshmallows
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