Cheaper by the Dozen

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Martin and Hunt are exactly the right lively but not sticky authority figures to keep the house (and the comedy pace) bouncing.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Lighthearted fun.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

It's not just a feel-good holiday movie, though audiences, especially youngsters, will certainly walk out of it feeling good.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Equal parts fantasy and cautionary tale, a film that manages to be uplifting and off-putting simultaneously -- fortunately, more the former than the latter.

Premiere Sara Brady

Cheaper entertains a broad audience by recalling an age of family filmmaking when that term wasn’t synonymous with crap.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

Isn't without charm, or laughs. Director Shawn Levy's film features some of the best child actor casting since "The Little Rascals."

Village Voice Ed Park

Solidifying his funnyman rep, Ashton Kutcher appears as oldest child Piper Perabo's model-actor boyfriend, a delightfully brainless narcissist.

Chicago Reader Hank Sartin

Be forewarned: this comedy bears only the faintest resemblance to the classic book and film of the same name.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Something of a shambles -- a shambles about a shambles -- but bound for big success and deservedly so.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Soft, sentimental, and as unlike real family life as you can get.

Miami Herald Christine Dolen

If only director Shawn Levy and the screenwriters had gone for cute and interesting instead of dull and cloyingly sentimental.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Much of the film feels like watching "Home Alone" and "Mr. Mom" on 12 different TVs at once.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

An unobjectionable if uninspired updating of a classic family story for the minivan generation.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

This is a movie that knows its audience and realizes it doesn't need much of a story to hit that audience, literally, where it lives.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

This is a movie that knows its audience and realizes it doesn't need much of a story to hit that audience, literally, where it lives.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Martin puts a thankless gloss on the antic role he played in "Parenthood." As his wife, Hunt is the movie's saving grace.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

As synthetic as a plastic Christmas tree.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

Thanks to Martin and Hunt, who both have a seemingly casual flair for mining laughs from even the most generic lines of dialogue, Cheaper by the Dozen works better than it might have in less capable hands, but even they're challenged by some of the picture's forced mood swings.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Much as I adore Martin and Hunt, whose matching tongue-in-cheek delivery and finite patience make them seem more like siblings than spouses, their movie is indistinguishable from an Afterschool Special.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Makes one long for Martin's edgy work in films such as "The Spanish Prisoner."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

Resembles nothing more than an overstuffed, undernourished "Brady Bunch" episode, only not as funny.

LA Weekly Jon Strickland

Nobody here, especially Martin, looks as if he's having much fun, apart from a dizzy cameo by Ashton Kutcher as oldest daughter Piper Perabo's model-actor beau, riffing heavy-handedly on his pretty-boy image, and loving it.

TV Guide Angel Cohn

Generally amusing -- if occasionally overly sentimental.

Variety Robert Koehler

Unfortunately knows no tone between schmaltzy/gooey and slapstick/gross-out. Pic is as far from the original pic and its autobiographical memoir source as it can be while retaining the same title.

Empire Niall MacPherson

The film works best when it taps into the chaos generated by the kids, and there are a number of suitably anarchic Home Alone-style set-pieces.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

There is not a frame of "Cheaper" that doesn't feel contrived. It fails the most fundamental test of movie logic.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Can be summed up by the fact that Ashton Kutcher, making a glorified cameo as a narcissistic model-slash-actor, is the best thing in it.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

Nothing happens. At all. Ever. Remember when Steve Martin was funny? Apparently, neither does he.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

A bubbling crockpot of farcical mush to warm the tummies of anyone who really and truly misses "The Brady Bunch," and I mean really and truly.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

Everyone learns a lesson by movie’s end: Don’t put work before family. Curiously, no one learns that all this could have been avoided with a good method of birth control.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

The same studio has aimed a remake at the same family market. Translation: The once-modest piece has been redesigned as a vehicle (a lumbering SUV) for Steve Martin, stripped of any vestigial charm, and then thrown into neutral, where its manic engine does nothing but roar loudly and pointlessly for the duration.