Steve Martin is an incredibly talented individual. Has been for years. It saddens me to see him waste his time in pictures like Bringing Down the House because he's so much better than that stale material. While his new film Cheaper By the Dozen is better than that misbegotten comedy, it still cheapens Martins stock in my book.

In this new comedy, Martin plays the ultimate family man. He has no choice for he and his lovely wife (played by the forever likable Bonnie Hunt) have been blessed (and sometimes cursed) with twelve children. The plot thickens when Martin is offered his dream job (football coach of his Alma Matta). So he packs up and takes his optimistic wife and less than thrilled brood to the big city where acclimating proves to be no easy task.

Cheaper By the Dozen is meant as harmless, family entertainment, but it's inability to walk that fine line between subtle humor and over the top farce made it extremely hard to sit through. Add to that, the inevitable sentimentality that goes along with a film of this nature, and you have a movie that narrowly escapes disaster.

Sure, there are funny moments here. Steve Martin's wit is as sharp as ever and so is his physical comedy. I also love the way he and Bonnie Hunt play off of each other. They're the perfect team. I was also somewhat amused by Ashton Kutcher who spends the entire film making fun of his own public persona. Yes, it's a one-joke gag but it works. Even Kutcher buddy and Punk'd partner in crime Dax shows up in a brief cameo. It should be noted, however, that Kutcher's screen time is limited to around seven minutes, which is odd given that he's all over the ad campaign. As for the rest of the humor, it just doesn't know when to quit. There is an all too obvious sequence in which a birthday party is crashed and it's punctuated by a catapulted Martin landing atop a helpless child. It's a dumb, over the top moment, and certainly one I could of done without. Oh, and did I mention that during the duration of this film, both a snake and a frog get loose wreaking havoc amongst unsuspecting houseguests? These gags were extremely easy and, ultimately, pretty unfunny.

The kids in Cheaper By the Dozen range from sweet to annoying. Hilary Duff seems as if she's reading from cue cards and as cute as she is, she doesn't dazzle as much as some of the other young talent out there (see Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider or Emma and Sarah Bolger in In America). Tom Welling of Smallville fame could become a star, but this certainly isn't the film that will break him into the big time. As is the case with most of the kids in this picture, he isn't really given much of a chance to shine.

It is the talent and natural demeanor of both Martin and Hunt that keep this picture remotely tolerable. Most of the characters in this picture act in a completely selfish manner, and I was really bothered by it. Kids will be kids (I have two myself) but the fashion in which some of the teenagers and even adults acted, felt false to me. Cheaper By the Dozen ends with a crisis of sorts. One that brings the entire family together again, wrapping everything up in a nice little bow. This is fine in some movies, but I didn't buy into it here because everything felt so processed in the first place.

As I watched the mediocre Cheaper By the Dozen, I was constantly reminded of another picture in which Martin played a family man. The far superior and much more textured Parenthood. That movie was extremely funny, touching and honest in it's depiction of that crazy thing called family, and it knew when to hold back. While Cheaper By the Dozen does feature two sweet performances, they're undermined by poor writing and a lack of restraint and movie making smarts.