Cheaper by the Dozen

I cannot muster up much in the way of poisoned-pen enthusiasm for this one, in fact, I cannot muster up much of anything for it. Cheaper by the Dozen sticks its three major stars in thankless roles, has them acting out less than amusing vignettes, and feels much longer than its meager 85 minutes.

This was once considered a crown jewel of family entertainment, and I suppose changing tastes have rendered it a dated, faded relic of a by-gone era. Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy are parents to a never-ending brood of overly precocious brats, with Jeanne Crain stuck in the blandest role of her career as the narrator and eldest daughter. The only time Crain gets to emote is when she understandably goes into lusty contortions over the dreamy Craig Hill throughout the film.

Other than that, there’s no true through line or plot to this, just a series of sitcom-level gags and stories strung together. A particularly unfunny one involves Mildred Natwick as a planned parenthood advocate becoming the joke of this ever-breeding family unit. Director Walter Lang is impersonal with his craft here, as if he knew he had a dead weight and tried his best to just power through. Webb and Loy, ever the consummate professionals, give their all, but we’ve seen Loy deliver perfect housewives in better films, and Webb’s monomaniacal behavior was put to better ends in Laura. Cheaper by the Dozen really lives up to its title, as there’s about a dozen short stories strung together to make this.