Cheaper By the Dozen
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Movie Reviews of Cheaper By the Dozen
Movie Review: Bang for the Buck
Summary: 5 Stars
Best bang for you buck. A classic, if Hollywood made movies like today the world would be a much better place.Movie Review: Cheaper by the Dozen (old version)
Summary: 5 Stars
Wouldn't watch the new movie, love the old one.Movie Review: movie based on a nonfiction biography
Summary: 4 Stars
The book by the same name was a best seller and for good reason. It is touching, entertaining, funny, moving, etc. This movie in 1950 captures that spirit. The setting is the years before and after World War I.
The father was strict, but he never took himself too seriously, and he dearly loved his wife and each of their children. And they loved him.
The movie is a series of some of the best vignettes in the book. A lot of the anecdotes had to be left out, of course. The book includes scenes from their courtship and from Gilbreth's earlier life.
He was from a poor family and started out as a bricklayer's apprentice. Laying bricks and watching what he was doing and how he was doing it led him to develop the principles of time-and-motion study. Soon, he started his own bricklaying business; and by applying his principles, he could get a bricklaying job done three-times faster than his competitors. Also, his methods were such that his workmen did not get as tired. Also, as I recall, he gave them a five-minute break every hour. Because he could complete three jobs in the time it took his competitors to complete one, he was able to afford to underbid his competitors and still make more profit. He paid his workers higher wages than his competitors, hence he was able to hire the best workers, which further increased his competitive advantage. With the money he made, he finally set himself up in business as an "efficiency expert", an unheard-of field at the time.
There are also scenes of the courtship of these two who were from opposite sides of the track. Her mother was opposed to the match, of course. She didn't listen and was happy the rest of her life.
In these times, when children are raised by daycare centers and TV sets, it is difficult to comprehend a family like the Gilbreths. It was less difficult at the time this movie came out. Not all families were as happy but many were. The book and the movie are less about raising a family efficiently than about raising them well. Mrs. Gilbreth was a psychologist and understood that. Instead of dismissing this movie and the book as make-believe, people with children would do well to get the book and try to learn from it.
Also, enjoy it. The book and the movie are funny, thought-provoking and moving.
Movie Review: Enjoyable movie true to the book's spirit
Summary: 4 Stars
Unlike the supposed remake put out at the end of 2003, this original movie adaptation of the book actually has heart, is entertaining without resorting to cheap shots or gross-out humour, and is overwhelmingly true to the spirit of the book. It might take awhile for the average modern viewer to get into it, though, since there really isn't much of a plot, not the way we've come to expect in modern movies, just a narration of various adventures the family had. This is by far one of the best and most honest screen adaptations of a book I've yet seen, right up there with 'Gone with the Wind' and 'Fiddler on the Roof.' However, screen adaptations of books being what they have to be due to time and money constraints, they naturally couldn't fit everything in, and so had to cut and paste some events from the book together so they wouldn't completely overlook the important stuff (and unlike many cut and paste jobs in other book-based movies, here it was done very tastefully instead of randomly and carelessly), and they did leave out a number of the funniest stories in the book, like Bill pushing the Chinese cook into the oven and the so-called interviews which ran in the paper, much to the family's horror that a lot of the things they supposedly said and did were made up to embarrass them. They also got the birth order of the last two mixed up; Jane was the last-born child in real life, and Bob was the penultimate. Still, given what passes for entertainment nowadays and how movies based on books usually bear little or no coherent resemblance to the story which the viewers know and love, this is a very clean and fun family movie.Movie Review: A Kinder, Gentler Hollywood Family
Summary: 4 Stars
Once again, this is a movie in which the original is better than the re-make, even though the latter was a decent, popular film.
What the two films offered, however, was another stark contrast in how the culture (and Hollywood) has changed. In this original version, unlike today's films: 1 - The father rules the roost; 2 - the kids are nice kids. They actually behave and are respectful; 3 - The general atmosphere is a far more kind and gentle one than scene in today's "family films."
In other words, this is a real throwback to an era of nice family films, when they really were truly that. It reminded me of "Life With Father." If you liked that film, you'd enjoy this.
Clifton Webb was fun to watch as the strict father. Myrna Loy's role as the mother wasn't as much as one would expect. Perhaps if the title hadn't already been taken, this would have been more aptly named "Life With Father" since Loy's part was so minor. The kids were pretty wholesome and believable for that era except Jeanne Crain was far too old to be playing a 17-year-old.
If the film could be described in one word, it would be CHARM. It doesn't provide a lot of big laughs but it's pleasant, and at 86 minutes doesn't overstay its welcome.