Cheaper by the Dozen is a film by director Shawn Levy, who would go on to make such equally unfunny movies as The Pink Panther, Night at the Museum and Night at the Museum 2. It stars Steve Martin as a father of 12 children, who lives in a small town where he works as a coach for the local football-team.
When the family moves to a suburb, because the father can get his dream-job there, the children are displeased. As the oldest daughter, who moved out a while ago, comes to visit the family, the rest of the children set loose the dog on her boyfriend. When the sister and her boyfriend leave the scene, the mother is asked to leave for New York for a couple of days, leaving dad alone to take care of the children.
The minute he is on his own, the children start to wreak havoc. The mother, however, is offered to go on a book-signing-tour, therefore being away from house for 2 more weeks. After a few days Steve figures out that he can’t handle taking care of the children, and also doing his coaching duties. Therefore he decides to combine the tasks, by bringing the football-team to home. At first this tactic seems to work, with the children helping around the house, the team winning their games and the mother having success with her book-tour. However, after a while the children start to feel neglected and start getting into trouble at school, for which they are grounded, therefore not being allowed to go to the neighbour’s kid’s birthday party. When the children do escape, and crash the birthday party, they somehow create a panic, which is made even worse when dad and the football team arrive to take the children home.
Afterwards, when the father left the house for a football match, the children call their mother who quickly comes back home, but will let a television show tape at their house. At the same time, Steve gets given the choice by his employers: the family, or the team.
When the film crew arrives, chaos ensues again, and the crew call their company, who decide that the show is off. With the whole family arguing, they only get back together to find one of the children, who decided to run away. The boy is found on the way back to their previous small-town home, which makes the father understand that that place is where the whole family was on their best.

Whatever happened to the once-great Steve Martin, that he now makes the least funny “comedies” ever?
This movie is a sequence of childish jokes, pranks and “accidents”, which all have been seen or done before tens of times. Martin just pulls out the usual act: a not-too-bright guy, who tries his best. The rest of the cast has other notorious names like Ashton Kutcher and Hillary Duff, who both are not known for their acting skills. The plot is short, the story is missing and the ending could be seen coming from the start.
In my opinion, this movie is seriously unworthy of any attention, and I think Steve Martin should have stopped this kind of films many years ago.