BEFORE: Some actors and actresses have already confirmed their spots in my year-end countdown, and three appearances is usually the cut-off point. A number of people qualified after voicing characters in "Toy Story", like Flea, Keanu Reeves, and Christina Hendricks. Now with this film and tomorrow's, I can hold spots for both Steve Martin, who appeared in a couple of those documentaries about comedians, and Bonnie Hunt, who carries over from "Toy Story 4".
I forgot to point out that "Toy Story 4" was the return to the back-to-school theme, but it was sort of accidental - like, I didn't go to see that film in the theater because part of it took place in Bonnie's kindergarten class, that was just a happy accident. Today's film was always part of the plan thematically, I figure there's just got to be some school stuff in here somewhere, what with 12 kids in this family.
THE PLOT: With his wife on a book tour, a father of twelve must handle a new job and his unstable brood.
AFTER: I'm pretty sure this one's been on my list for quite some time, it just never seems to be the right time to cross it off the list. I think maybe a couple back-to-school chains have come and gone since I dubbed this one to DVD, I guess the linking was never there. (Or perhaps I was avoiding this film, because I'd already seen "Parenthood", and this seemed a bit like a carbon copy.) Just like this year, I find myself again with a limited number of slots, so I won't be able to get to films like "Wonder", "Thirteen" and "Eighth Grade". Better luck next year, guys.
It looked at the start of the week that I had a running theme going about the African-American experience, with "If Beale Street Could Talk", "Higher Learning", "Top Five", "Sorry to Bother You", and "Creed II", and actors like Tracy Morgan and Ice Cube. But that's too easy, plus the films here at the tail end of the week don't even have many prominent black actors in them. But there's another common thread, this week's films all feature people making bold moves to get ahead - Eddie Krumble going on that talk show to find his girlfriend, Andre Allen taking a dramatic role in a slave biopic, Cassius Green changing his voice to become a power caller, and Adonis Creed agreeing to the rematch with Viktor Drago. Even in "Toy Story 4", Woody takes a bold step at the end to change his fate - and tonight a football coach at a small college in Indiana accepts a head coach job at a larger college and moves his family to Illinois. All 11 out of 12 kids (the oldest kid moved out already, and conveniently co-habitates with her boyfriend in the Chicago area.)
There's a lot of bad parenting going on here, and some of that can be attributed by what probably happens when you have 12 children - even on your best day, your parental attention is probably spread so thin that it's impossible for every child to get what they deserve, both on a tangible and an emotional level. The explanations for WHY this couple continued conceiving children long past the point of when any rational person would have stopped are shaky at best. "Oh, he didn't know that a vasectomy takes a couple of weeks to kick in..." Umm, is that a real medical thing, or just some screenwriter's excuse? You can't tell me that most parents would have stopped FOR SURE after 10, or after 8, or really, after 6 - for financial reasons, if nothing else. Everything's a struggle for people with THREE kids, so imagine 12, how can anything, from a communal breakfast to juggling sports and other extra-curricular activities for 11 school-attending kids, possibly go right?
Still, they seem to manage, until Tom Baker is offered his dream job, coaching at his old college, with a huge jump in salary that seems, at first, to be the answer to all of the family's problems. However, as you might imagine for the sake of comedy, it's only the beginning. Ha, ha, isn't it funny that mom and dad are going to uproot 11 kids, take them away from their friends and the schools they've become comfortable in, and throw them all to the wolves in a new city, where they don't have any idea how everything works? Well, no, not really. Isn't it funny that Mom gets the opportunity to publish her book, which takes her away from her kids for a two-week book tour, leaving Dad to juggle his new job AND taking care of 11 kids? Again, not really.
I'm probably not in the target audience for this film, because I stopped at having ZERO kids, so this just doesn't represent my world. I don't have the skill set for raising kids, I can barely take care of myself - plus I never played sports in high school or college (except math team and College Bowl - the trivia game, not football). But I'm usually a big Steve Martin fan, and I've worked hard to catch up on all of his movies that I missed the first time around, even those horrible "Pink Panther" reboots. I think his only features that I haven't seen now are "Bringing Down the House" and "Jiminy Glick in Lalawood". I think he's a great actor, but unfortunately, most child actors just aren't capable of delivering dialogue in a believable way, it almost always FEELS like they're acting, because some director or acting coach just hasn't been able to get them to stop acting and start just "being". There were a lot of line deliveries here by kid actors that just made me wince.
Contained here is a common enough dilemma (I assume) regarding whethers a parent should take a better job in another city, forcing a kid to move if that will be "better" for them in the long run. The Baker parents here let their children vote on the issue, however the vote is non-binding. So, then, umm, why do it? To teach their kids a lesson about the unimportance of the election process? Or is it just "my way, and none other" when it comes to parenting? So, parents are going to do what they perceive as "best" for their kids, and make empty promises about how life's going to be "better" after the move, and then just never follow through on that? Eventually lessons are learned and Tom Baker learns to put his kids first, but it's possible that the damage is already done by that point.
Neither gender gets portrayed well here - Mom can't have a career AND take care of her family, or if she goes on the book tour (which she does) that means the house is going to fall into chaos, and it almost feels like she didn't care. Meanwhile Dad wrote a check that he couldn't cash, allowed his kids to become more and more chaotic, while he failed to find a way to juggle his new job, home chores, and instituting some measure of discipline. Collectively they thought they could have it all, and all the pieces would just somehow fall into place, but that's not the way that life works. Anything worthwhile requires effort, whether that's taking care of kids or doing home repairs, or focusing on your career. You might be able to skate on one of those things part of the time, but trying to take on too much could mean that you'll end up failing at all three.
Sure, they could have hired professional help, especially with Dad's new salary, but then we wouldn't have a movie, would we? There's a montage of Mr. Baker calling every child-service agency in town, and either not being taken seriously, or having his business rejected, again and again. Gotta call a NITPICK POINT here, because if you ran a child-care agency and someone with 10 kids under the age of 18 called you, theoretically that could be a gold mine. Your eyes should light up with dollar signs at that point, and you could send three caregivers over to the house and charge whatever you wanted. But then the whole conflict in the second half of the film wouldn't exist, I suppose.
You might call this a comedy, but to me it's something closer to a horror film. I may have nightmares next week about being the father of 12 kids and not being able to handle them all, unless I get stress dreams about the upcoming New York Comic-Con instead, which is a distinct possibility.
Also starring Steve Martin (last seen in "Love, Gilda"), Piper Perabo (last seen in "Looper"), Tom Welling, Hilary Duff, Richard Jenkins (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Ashton Kutcher (last seen in "Bobby"), Kevin G. Schmidt (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel"), Alyson Stoner, Jacob Smith (last seen in "Dragonfly"), Forrest Landis (last seen in "Flightplan"), Lilana Mumy, Morgan York, Blake Woodruff, Brent Kinsman (last seen in "Knocked Up"), Shane Kinsman (ditto), Alan Ruck (last seen in "War Machine"), Paula Marshall, Steven Anthony Lawrence (last seen in "The Cat in the Hat"), Holmes Osborne (last seen in "The Box"), Rex Linn (last seen in "Appaloosa"), Tiffany Dupont, Cody Linley (last seen in "Where the Heart Is"), Adam Taylor Gordon, Joel McCrary, Dax Shepard (last seen in "The Judge"), Elon Gold, with cameos from Regis Philbin (last seen in "Always at the Carlyle"), Kelly Ripa (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Wayne Knight (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Jared Padalecki (last seen in "Flight of the Phoenix"), director Shawn Levy and the voice of Frank Welker (last heard in "Mulan 2").
RATING: 4 out of 10 assembly-line sandwiches
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