May 29, 2006

  • Last night Don and I watched "Cheaper by the Dozen2".  Well, he watched the whole thing....I bailed after 45 minutes or so.  That was one of the most singularly irritating movies I've ever tried to sit through.

    The Baker family were simply pests.  The "bad" family that lived across the lake was heaps nicer'n than them.  Let me tell you, bring a backpack full of fireworks to a dinner at the club *I* helped establish, set the backpack near open flame so they all start to go off, grab the bag and throw it into the lake where it lands on a boat so the boat explodes and the engine flies into the air then lands on one of the buffet tables, and I'm going to be crabby.

    If I generously (even if with a "be nice to the little people" attitude) invite the neighbors over for brunch and they haul along their rambunctious DOG, and the dog runs amok (due to the machinations of a Baker daughter at the behest of her father), destroying the set of china I was very proud of, it having been a gift from the king of Thailand, and I'd be downright furious.

    That's where I got up and left....as the china was being smashed.  Couldn't take it any longer.

    A more self-indulgent, spoiled rotten, ill-behaved family than Tom Baker's would be hard to find.  That wasn't funny or amusing...it was pathetic and annoying.

    Why the Gilbreath family would permit their name to be lent to such a ghastly film, even though only in the credits, beats me.  Frank and Lillian Gilbreath would have been appalled and horrified at the antics of the family supposedly based upon theirs.

    This was one awful movie.  Skip it.  e-thumbsdown

Comments (10)

  • Thanks for the review, I have the book and it is nothing like that. I wonder if the Gilbreaths were involved!! I sorta doubt it.

  • Exactly! The books "Cheaper by the Dozen" and its sequel (after Frank Sr. died), "Belles on Their Toes", are excellent. Part of the underlying story in both books is how the Gilbreaths had such a large family, yet the children were well behaved. Also, Papa Gilbreath did push his kids along, expecting them to be scholastically advanced. Yet that was what the other father did in the movie.

    Honestly, they might as well have said the movie was based on the Von Trapp family or something.

  • we just watched it last night and i loved it !

  • Hmmm....then most likely it touched too close to home.

    My kids weren't always the most well-behaved bunch. Bunch o' Bakers, that's what they were. =8^o

    Hehehehe!

  • MY Grandkids are Always Well Behaved!! Watch your mouth!! Hummmmp.!!!

  • Whoever owns the film rights to the books can do anything they please with them, including using the title and making a movie that bears no resemblance to the original tale.

  • I was speaking rhetorically, VAL.

    Did they read the script at all before lending their name? Or was the script changed after they'd signed on the dotted line? Or don't they care so long as the dibs are in tune?

  • There seem to be variations on how much control is stipulated in the deal, though. Douglas Greshman, for example, had a LOT of control over what finally went into LWW. And I think J.K. Rowling takes a pretty active role in the HP movies (though if I were she, I'd be embarrassed to admit it. That labyrinth was absolutely ridiculous. But I digress.)

    The other thing is that since this was a sequel, and was not (as far as I know, though I've never seen it) in any way based on any copyrighted book, I'm not sure there was any control the Gilbreths COULD have had over it. You mean you can't make a movie out of your own head and call the people in it "Gilbreth" without the approval of some set of people named Gilbreth? What if their name had been "Jones?"

  • But why say it's based on Frank and Lillian Gilbreath's family if it bears absolutely no resemblence whatsoever to it?

    You know what it was, I'll bet?

    They wanted The Name: "Cheaper by the Dozen." Didn't care about anything else, but they did want The Name, and since Frank and Ernestine Gilbreath (I forget what her married name is) own the rights to it...well, there ya go.

  • Precisely. Why SAY it's based on their family if it bears no resemblance? PUBLICITY!!! Why make a movie about a rebellious feminist writer and call it "Mansfield Park?" There are many other examples we could come up with. But the name SELLS, so they want the name.

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