When Tom Baker (Steve Martin) gets a job offer to coach football at Northwestern University in Chicago, he and his wife, Mary, move to the big city, which is a big change for them and their 12 children, who range from preschool-age twins Kyle and Nigel all the way up to 22-year-old Anne who has already left home.
With the recent publication of her long-in-the-works book, Mary feels demands outside the home taking away as much time as Tom’s new job does, so the two are forced to try to find new ways of parenting their massive tribe, but they find their parenting styles aren’t always completely compatible.
In modern America, where the average family has 1.87 children, Tom Baker (Steve Martin) and wife Kate (Bonnie Hunt) have decided that life is better “if not cheaper” by the dozen.
The Bakers live in a small Illinois town where Tom coaches the local college football team. The family?s day-to-day life is marked by equal parts love and chaos? pet-frog-landing-in-the-breakfast eggs type of chaos. When Tom is offered his dream job coaching a squad at a large university he and Kate uproot the family, much to the displeasure of all 12 children.
At the same time, Kate learns that her memoirs are about to be published. Her agent whisks her away to New York to promote the book, leaving Tom home alone to handle the increasingly unhappy and hectic household, as well as his demanding new job.
With all hell breaking loose at home, Kate on the road, and Tom’s job on the line, the Baker family ultimately chooses not to have it all, but to love what they do have.
Directed by: Shawn Levy
Starring: Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Piper Perabo, Tom Welling, Hilary Duff, Aston Kutcher
Screenplay by: Sam Harper
Film Editing by: Matthew Cassel
Costume Design by: Alexa M. Stone
Produced by: Michael Barnathan, Ben Myron, Robert Simonds
MPAA Rating: PG for language and some thematic elements.
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: December 25, 2003
