The film was released on December 25, 2003, by 20th Century Fox and grossed $190 million worldwide against a $40 million budget. The Rotten Tomatoes critical consensus criticized the film for its lack of humor.[4]
Tom Baker is a football coach at a small rural college in Midland, Illinois, where he raised twelve children. His wife, Kate, has written her story in a book and hopes to send it to her best friend, Diane Phillips for publication. Tom receives a job offer from his old friend and football teammate, Shake McGuire, to coach at his alma mater in his hometown of Evanston, Illinois. Tom accepts the offer, and demands all the children vote on moving. Despite losing the vote, Tom has the entire family move to Evanston for a better home and space. The atmosphere at the Bakers' new house is tense and the situation at school is even worse for the younger children.
When her book is ready to pick up for publication, Kate is required to do a national book tour to promote it. Tom thinks that he can handle everything in the family's household while Kate is away, so he decides to hire the family's oldest child, Nora, and her self-absorbed boyfriend, Hank, to manage the children. When Nora and Hank arrive at the Bakers' house, the younger children make Hank the target of their prank by soaking his underwear in raw meat and make the Bakers' pet dog to bite his buttocks, prompting him to refuse to assist in babysitting. As a result, Nora angrily drives off with Hank, while Tom lectures them for their prank. After Kate departs for her book tour, Tom realizes that he cannot handle the children on his own after a chaotic night. He tries to hire a housekeeper, but nobody is willing to work with a family as large as the Bakers. Tom decides to bring the football players from work into his house for game practicing in the living room to prepare for the Saturday night football game, while the children perform chores and their household games. However, they start causing trouble at school and Charlie gets kicked off the football team. Shake bars Tom from holding practices at his house and the children from ever entering the athletic department again.
Kate overhears from the children about the chaos and cancels the book tour to take charge of the situation. Diane decides to create an additional promotion for her book by inviting Oprah Winfrey to tape a segment about the Bakers in their home instead. Despite much coaching from Kate, the Bakers are not able to demonstrate the loving, strongly bonded family that Kate described in her book. However, when Mark starts crying because his pet frog dies, a heated argument erupts before the segment starts, leading the cameramen to call Winfrey to cancel the segment. Mark runs away from home, prompting the Bakers to find him. Tom indulges a hunch that Mark is trying to return to the Bakers' old home, and finds Mark riding on an Amtrak train en route to Midland. Reuniting with the rest of their family, the Bakers begin to address their issues with each other. Tom ultimately retires from his position at his alma mater. The Bakers are celebrating Christmas together as the chandelier in the hallway breaks from the ceiling and crashes onto the ground at the end of the film.
Cast
Baker family
Steve Martin as Tom Baker, the patriarch of the Baker family
Bonnie Hunt as Kate Baker, the matriarch of the Baker family who is the narrator of the film
Piper Perabo as Nora Baker, the eldest Baker child
Tom Welling as Charlie Baker, the second Baker child
Hilary Duff as Lorraine Baker, the third Baker child
Jared Padalecki as an unnamed bully who causes problems for Charlie
Wayne Knight as Pete, the electrician whose repairs on the Bakers' chandelier in the hallway cause him to fall off of his ladder in two different incidents.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 24% of 119 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.6/10.The website's consensus reads: "In this family of twelve children, much chaos ensues, but little hilarity."[4]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 46 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[5] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an A− grade.[6]
Despite this, the film was given "Two Thumbs Up" from Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper on their television show. Ebert in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 out of 4 stars and called it "lighthearted fun".[7]
Robert Koehler of Variety was critical of the uneven tone of the film, varying between "schmaltzy/gooey and slapstick/gross-out" and wrote that it was "as far from the original pic and its autobiographical memoir source as it can be while retaining the same title" but predicted a wide-ranging audience for the film.[8]
Box office
The film ranked at #2 for the weekend, grossing $27,557,647 in its opening weekend ($35,397,241 including its Thursday Christmas Day gross of $7,839,594) from 3,298 theaters for an average of $8,356 per theater ($10,733 average per theater over four days), being kept from the top spot by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The film went on to gross $138,614,544 in North America, and an additional $51,597,569 internationally, for a total gross of $190,212,113 worldwide, nearly five times its $40 million budget.[3]
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