This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Having it All and Then Some
Plot Overview
A college
romance blossoms between senior football player Tom Baker
(Steve Martin) and freshman sports writer Kate (Bonnie Hunt)
resulting in their marrying and moving to the country to raise a
desired family. They thought big and had twelve kids who were more
fun than a barrel of monkeys. When opportunity arose for Tom to
coach at his alma mater, he jumped at the chance and moved there
with his family in tow. Meanwhile, Kate's novel took off, and
she went on a limited book tour leaving Tom in charge of the home
front in the interim. The tour took longer than expected, the
children couldn't adapt to the urban environment, the college
officials were not getting their money's worth, and the
once happy family collapsed into chaos.
The father had become non-traditional, not the one to “bring home the bacon” but the one to “cook it.” The mother had quit her motherly role as “the primary care giver” defined so in her own book. The eldest daughter Nora (Piper Perabo) at twenty-two was not available to baby sit for having moved in with a loser boyfriend. The next in line Charlie (Tom Welling) was like to forsake a “full ride” scholarship in order to go work at his girlfriend's mom's auto shop, telling his dad, “Since we moved here, everybody's been looking out for number one, especially you and mom.” The next in line Lorraine (Hilary Duff) was the one refreshing voice of reason in the place. Soon we get to Sarah (Alyson Stoner) the ring leader for her remaining brothers & sisters who gang up to sabotage the move.
Ideology
Lorraine could be a ringer for a girl from a Kurt Vonnegut novel:I could not take my eyes off Mona. I was thrilled, heartbroken, hilarious, insane. Every greedy, unreasonable dream I'd ever had about what a woman should be came true in Mona. There, God love her warm and creamy soul, was peace and plenty forever.That girl—she was only eighteen—was rapturously serene. She seemed to understand all, and to be all there was to understand. In The Books of Bokonon she is mentioned by name. One thing Bokonon says of her is this: “Mona has the simplicity of the all.”
Her dress was white and Greek.
She wore flat sandals on her small brown feet.
Her pale gold hair was lank and long.
Her hips were a lyre.
Oh God. (81)
Indeed, one of Lorraine's outfits was
all white, but she had a good variety of them especially after
moving to where her dad had a more lucrative job. She declaims,
“This family doesn't value self-presentation in the same
extensive way that I do.” She was a “fashion guru,
self-appointed in-house representative of style and
hygiene.” She adds, “For the record, I am so over
Nora's hand-me-downs.” Kate reassures her, “You look
gorgeous in anything.” She does, in my typical guy
opinion—what do we know about women's fashions? Women dress
for other women. As long as they are neat & clean, we find them
attractive, especially at that age.
The
apostle Paul enjoins (1Tim. 2:9)
“that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with
shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or
gold, or pearls, or costly array.”
“Shamefacedness” has to do with being easily
embarrassed, as, I suppose, in having to wear hand-me-downs. The
relevant note in my Franklin Electronic Bible reads, “Early
printer's error for ‘shamefastness’, which
means modesty of character.” The New Cambridge
Paragraph Bible restores the original
‘shamefastness’, and the ASV retains it, too.
Although Lorraine wore some light summer clothes when with her girlfriends and family, she was otherwise most modest, with a bodice that reached to up to her chin and a skirt that came halfway down her calves. She displayed modesty of character by being diplomatic, negotiating for added bathroom time, putting a good spin on their dad's absence (“At least we get to see him on TV”,) and breaking up a developing fight between Charlie and some jocks at school. By contrast Kate's negress book manager—who “can't even manage a boyfriend”—wore flashy loop earrings & a pendant necklace, and she has Kate's girls dress in “fancy, nice clean clothes for Oprah.”
Bible translators being mostly men diddle around with clothing epithets not necessarily understanding the repercussions; their goal is enough variegation to make their translation unique, so to acquire a copyright necessary to sell their product. An example of the worst in attire is being moderately modest as updated by the NKJV. The modernized New King James Version (NKJV) opts for a simplified vocabulary, (1 Tim. 2:9) “that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation.” The schoolgirls at the new school seem to embody the expression, “If you got it, flaunt it,” which needs more than moderate rethinking. Propriety is the tutored remarks the hypocritical Baker family are to make to Oprah during her visit. None of this will cut it if the family is losing their cool.
Production Values
“” (2003) was a remake of the original version of 1950. It was directed by Shawn Levy. It was written by Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., Ernestine Gilbreth Carey and Craig Titley. It stars Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt and Hilary Duff. Martin was so funny one just had to look at him to laugh. The children did a pretty decent job, too. Duff was a wet dream.
MPA rated
it PG for language and
some thematic elements. There were cows in the pasture on the other
side of the fence from a jogging Martin during the opening scene.
An overly protected new neighbor kid Dylan Shenk (Steven Anthony
Lawrence) provided some additional spice when he invited the Baker
children to his birthday party. The new football team, the
book publisher, and the film crew were all integrated and seemed not to
faze their country cousins. Runtime is 1 hour 38 minutes.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The movie seemed to flip from one happy family to chaos when they abandoned tradition. It was funny throughout and a happy ending was provided, especially through the end narration.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done action scenes. Suitability for children: Suitable for children with guidance. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Groups. Suspense: A few suspenseful moments. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Unless otherwise indicated, Bible quotations are from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769, 1873. Software, Print.
Scripture quotation marked NKJV is from the New King James Version, Copyright © 1979 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Print.
Franklin note is from "The Bible Word Book," R. Bridges and L. Weigle, Thomas Nelson 1960.
Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat's Cradle, copyright © 1963 by Kurt Vonnegut. Appearing in Three Complete Novels. New York: Wings Books, 1995. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org