Review

Not to be confused with Steve Martin’s remake of Cheaper by the Dozen, or the original Clifton Webb version from 1950, Dozen 2 boasts not only the twelve Baker kids, but Jimmy Murtaugh’s (Eugene Levy) eight cute and cuddly ones jamming it up at summer camp on a lovely lake. Everyone’s back and having summer family fun, first loves, a first pregnancy, and two dads, both of whom have a competitive streak that informs the bulk of the script. Jimmy and Tom have to prove that their family is the best and these rivalries culminate at the camp’s Labor Day Cup featuring all the wholesome family sporting events like three-legged race, egg running, volleyball, you name it. This time around, Carmen Electra joins the cast as Sarina, Jimmy’s young trophy wife who secretly bonds with Kate Baker (Bonnie Hunt). Sarah Baker, (the talented Alyson Stone) falls for a handsome Murtaugh boy – and this budding tween romance brings the two dads together.

If Doris Day and Lucille Ball were alive and transported to the 21st century, this might be the sort of movie they would approve of. It passes for what remains of good clean family fun without uptight moralizing, adding just the right amount of soft-hearted goodness embodied by the parents toward their clans. Super-large families might be a throwback to earlier, less populated and innocent times, but for the sake of this film, the pratfalls, food messes and controlled chaos of crowded houses seem to suit this harmless, sometimes funny Martin and Levy vehicle.