Cheaper by the Dozen (2022) Movie Review

Hey everyone! How's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Saturday. So, today I'm here to talk about the new Disney+ Original Movie, Cheaper by the Dozen starring Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union. I will have to talk about some spoilers in this movie, so if you haven't watched it yet, please do so before you read this review. Let's get into it.

 Cheaper by the Dozen was originally written as a novel in 1948 by Frank Gilbreth and his sister, and was adapted into a movie in 1950, which stars Clifton Webb, and again in 2003, with an all-star cast including Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Tom Welling, Hilary Duff, and Piper Perabo. My siblings and I watched the 2003 version on TV alot in the 2000s, as well as it's 2005 sequel. So when I heard that Disney was producing a remake for Disney+ I was intrigued especially because I am a fan of Zach Braff from Scrubs (2001-2010), Chicken Little (2005), and Garden State (2004). Plus I loved the 2003 movie when it came out, so I was pumped for this movie.

I ended up watching it last night on Disney+ with my sister over video chat and I didn't have high expectations for it. Why would I? It's Cheaper by the Dozen, not Shakespeare, it's not meant to be high art. I thought the movie was fine.

The film follows Paul Baker (Braff), his wife, Zoey (Union), and their ten children. Technically nine, but Paul's nephew, Seth, joins the family midway through the movie. The family runs an all day breakfast place, which is my favourite thing ever, and the kids are your typical kid characters, in that they play sports, are geeks, play music, and whatever else the writers of the movie thought of for kids to do in a movie. They're also joined by Paul's ex-wife, Kate, and Zoey's ex-husband, Dom Clayton, who is a fictional famous basketball player. Things get even more chaotic when Paul gets an opportunity to expand his restaurant and the family moves to a high end neighbourhood in Los Angeles County. They also end up dealing with racial issues stemming from the fact that Paul is a white man, Zoey is a black woman, and the kids are a mix of black, white, and brown, plus there are lots of kids. 

I like how diverse the cast of this movie is. The cast of the Steve Martin version is very white, even for 2003. And it's also a very nuclear family. Whereas this version has a very diverse cast, and the family is a mix of two different families, which is very cool. One of their daughters was even in a wheelchair, which, trust me, I will get to shortly. I also liked how much chemistry there was between the cast. It actually felt like they were an actual family, which is very difficult to pull off in movies, because the cast is only together for a few months and then they move on to the next project. It's a little easier to pull off on television or in a series of movies.

I did feel like the kids were bland in this movie compared to the 2003 version and it's sequel. There's probably as many kids in the movie as there was in the earlier version, but for most of the movie I couldn't figure out who was who outside of Seth, DJ, and Deja, three of the older kids, but not the oldest, because Ella and Harley are the oldest, and I couldn't remember which was which as neither of them have much personality. The youngest kids also didn't matter that much, because they were there to be the Michelle Tanner/Ruthie Camden/Vanessa Huxtable cute kid characters. The whole family was fun to watch though.

Which leads into the biggest problem of the movie for me. Harley. Not the character herself, or the fact that she's in a wheelchair. No, my problem with her is how poorly her disability was portrayed in the movie. The movie was about diversity, and it got the racial diversity down pretty well, it just failed on the physical diversity. 

At the beginning of the movie, we see Harley sharing a room with Ella on the second floor of the house, but then a few seconds later we see her downstairs, but it doesn't show how she gets to and from her bedroom on the second floor as she uses her wheelchair in the house all the time. No crutches or walker, like I used to use when I was a kid. The only indication that Harley can get in and out of the house in her chair is that there's a ramp on the front step. However the Bakers don't have an accessible van, which is a requirement when you have someone in the family who is in a wheelchair all the time.

There is a scene where Harley transfers from her wheelchair to her parents's bed by herself for the unplanned family movie night when Paul and Zoey are trying to have a romantic night of sex, but given that we don't know what her disability even is, I don't know why she has to use her wheelchair in the house when she could be like me and only need it when going out. Which is plausible btw, because that's been me my whole life. And then once they get to the mansion they live in for the rest of the movie they mention that the house has an elevator, which is weird, even for a mansion that looks like it came straight out of The O.C. Later, when they move back to their original neighbourhood, there's no ramp on their new house at all. So it's little things like that that pulled me out of the movie. It also pulled my sister out because she grew up with me, so she understands what it's like to face these kinds of issues.

I don't normally talk about representation on this blog, because I am white, I am straight, and I'm male so I don't consider myself qualified to talk about things like that when doing reviews. However, in this instance, I do because I am physically disabled. I'm also autistic but that's not relevant to this movie. I've used a wheelchair my entire life, and outside of comic books, where I had Barbara Gordon/Oracle as a representation of physical disability, as well as Charles Xavier, though that really didn't come about for me until the first X-Men movie from 2000, fiction was not filled with physically disabled characters. Particularly ones who are in wheelchairs. Not ones that were positive representations of people with disabilities. And even when I was a teenager, there were very few characters in the shows that I watched who were physically disabled and used a wheelchair.

There was Joan's brother, Kevin, in Joan of Arcadia (2003-2005) and Jimmy Brooks (played by Drake/Aubrey Graham) from Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001-2014), but he became handicapped after the fourth season two part episode "Time Stands Still", which I reviewed on The Review Basement last year. You can read the review here. But other than those two there weren't any central characters who were physically disabled or used a wheelchair in the shows that I watched. At least, not in the 2000s. There was a girl named Donna in The Odyssey, which was a children's fantasy series that aired from 1992 until 1994 on CBC Television but I didn't see it until YTV re-ran it in the early 2000s around the time that season 2 of Digimon aired on the channel. But many of the characters I mentioned were either in car accidents prior to the start of the show (Kevin), were shot in the spine (Jimmy and Oracle), or had an unspecific disability that was never brought up (Donna). And the only one I remember they really did well with was Jimmy on Degrassi: The Next Generation.

I mentioned all of that because TV shows and movies very rarely do physically disabled people right. Even today we aren't represented very well in fiction, and when we are it's the most generic or stupid way of doing it, and I was disappointed that Harley was handled so poorly in this movie. I didn't find out the character was even in the movie, until I saw her on the screenshot used for the movie's main page on Disney+ so I got really excited there was going to be a character who was in a wheelchair as a main character in the movie. Then it became more and more apparent that she wasn't a main character and was basically there as set dressing. It's a very good example of the Tokenism I talked about with Adira and Gray Tal in my review of the fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery yesterday. It's the kind of thing that really needs to stop in entertainment.

The movie is funny though, even if the humour is predictable in places. The physical comedy isn't as prevalent as it is in the 2003 version, but that's to be expected because Zach Braff isn't big on physical comedy. At least not in anything I've seen him in. He's more about the witty comebacks and the verbal comedy than the physical. Which is fine. And like I said earlier, all of the characters work pretty well together. There are times it did feel like I was watching The O.C. instead of this movie, particularly with the women Zoey becomes friends with once they move into the gated community they live in for the majority of the movie. They all reminded me of the "Newpsies" (Kirsten's group of friends from the first season) from that show. So that was fun.

Overall though Cheaper by the Dozen (2022) is worth a watch. It definitely feels more like a Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) than a theatrical release so be aware of that if you decide to watch it this weekend. It's also a fine movie to watch with the family, as I think the kids will have fun with it. It is a bit all over the place though and, like I said, a few things, like Harley's disabilities, were handled poorly enough that they took me out of the film in places, so also be aware of that if you watch it.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more reviews and other posts. So until then have a wonderful rest of your weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.