Brief Story Line
The Bakers were a large family that consisted of the father Paul (Zach Braff - Scrubs TV series, Garden State etc), his wife Zoey (Gabrielle Union - Sleepless, L.A's Finest TV series etc) and their children Deja (Journee Brown), DJ (Andre Robinson), Ella (Kylie Rogers - The Whispers TV series etc), Harley (Caylee Blosenski), Haresh (Aryan Simhadri) and the smaller children referred to as the littles. They were twins Luna (Mykal-Michelle Harris) & Luca (Leo A. Perry) and younger twins Bailey & Bronx (Christian Cote & Sebastian Cote). Paul and Zoey owned a restaurant called Baker's breakfast operated by their whole family.
Meanwhile, Paul's ex wife Kate (Erika Christensen - Parenthood TV series, Traffic etc) sometimes would help as babysitter for the children and Zoey's ex husband Dom (Timon Kyle Durret) also appeared occasionally to bond with Deja and DJ. Things got a bit complicated for Paul and Zoey when they seemed to have a bit of financial problems.
So how would the Bakers solve this as well as dealing with the various challenge of raising a large family? Find them all in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
When we started seeing this movie, my thoughts were a bit jumbled with another movie titled Yours, Mine & Ours likely because it told the story of 2 large families blended together. So I could not help making comparison with that movie where I thought this one was lacking in term of conflict since they were already loving family living together.
In case you are not familiar, this movie was a remake of the 2003 film of the same title which my wife and I enjoyed. That film starred a combination of well known plus few rising stars at that time and I remember having lots of laughter seeing the comedy (even if some might considered them too slapstick). Watching this one though, gave me a bit of mixed feeling since personally to me the comedy was not too much, plus there were racial issues brought up which I thought was a bit too serious for such movie. Meanwhile the main challenge faced by the parents seemed too easily solved.
The cast who played the Bakers were generally OK. The young talents seemed suitable for their roles and the chemistry looked good. I also thought Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union were perfect as the parents of so many kids. However, I really thought that the character Kate was totally redundant although Dom was quite an integral part of the conflict. Funny thing my wife and I thought Braff looked really familiar but after seeing his portfolio, both of us felt weird as he was famous for series that we have not seen while those that we saw, he was voice actors. It turned out that we mistakenly thought of him as Dax Shepard who was said to be his lookalike (doppelganger).
In addition to the names mentioned above, there were also additional cast of Brittany Daniel (Skyline, Joe Dirt etc) and her twin sister Cynthia (Sweet Valley High TV series) as Melanie and Michelle respectively. Plus Luke Prael as Seth who was an important character that would help explain the biggest query my wife and I had from the start. This movie was directed by Gail Lerner in her directorial debut, but I did see the familiar name Shawn Levy as one of the producers. Levy was the director of Cheaper by the Dozen 2003 version which was a remake of the 1950 film of the same name and based on the semi-autobiographical book written by Frank Bunker Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey.
Overall to me this is a family friendly movie which is quite enjoyable but not that memorable. It did have few funny moments usually involving the littles or one moment involving Paul at Deja's school. The film might have a quite up to date issues like racial problems but there was nothing that made it that special to me. I also think the problems faced by the children were too focused on 2 of them while the rest felt like they were just there to complete the quota. Although to be fair it might be difficult to fit the story of everybody in 107 minutes including closing credits. So if you want to have a bit of fun with your family, this might suit you. As long as you do not expect something totally hilarious or really heavy drama, then you should be fine.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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