Not much of a bargain

Cheaper By The Dozen 2
*

The Bakers, who have no less than 12 offspring, are apparently America's favourite movie family. This we gather from the large amount of money the first film made at the box office. But there's something deeply suspect about a society that breeds so freely and produces such horrendous kids.

Maybe the success of these movies can be put down to the presence of Steve Martin as Dad. He has cleverly substituted his once anarchic comedy personality for a bland approximation of a nice, if slightly incompetent, middle-class parent.

Perhaps it has something to do with Bonnie Hunt, who plays his wife as a woman so spry and well-groomed that you'd think she could probably deliver herself of another dozen sprogs by teatime.

It certainly can't be because of the children - one of whom, Lorraine (Hilary Duff), is a dreadful warning to the others not to grow up.

The plot concerns Mum and Dad taking their brood off to summer camp, where the highly competitive father of another large family (Eugene Levy), equipped with a wife young enough to be his daughter, decides to challenge the Bakers in the camp's sports day. It's the yin versus the yang of parenting.

The film is porously sentimental, with a feelgood ending that tells everybody that absolutely everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. It is not for cynics.

Perhaps you will enjoy it. But I never want to see the Baker family again. Ever.