The Baker brood moves to Chicago after patriarch Tom gets a job coaching football at Northwestern University, forcing his writer wife, Mary, and the couple's 12 children to make a major adjustment. The transition works well until work demands pull the parents away from home, leaving the kids bored -- and increasingly mischievous.
We are not only asked to find the barbarian Baker brood a model of familial loyalty and unconditional devotion, we're also asked to regard with contempt everyone else who does not share the Bakers' unbridled consumerist anarchy.
– Geoff Pevere,
Toronto Star,
25 Dec 2003
rotten:
So calculatedly cast with popular kid stars that it seems a focus group was guiding all the choices.
– Claudia Puig,
USA Today,
25 Dec 2003
fresh:
Martin and Hunt give the production a mellow warmth. And Levy has cast an appealingly diverse bunch of kids to play the young Bakers.
– Ann Hornaday,
Washington Post,
25 Dec 2003
fresh:
This is a movie that knows its audience and realizes it doesn't need much of a story to hit that audience, literally, where it lives.
– Desson Thomson,
Washington Post,
25 Dec 2003
fresh:
It's not just a feel-good holiday movie, though audiences, especially youngsters, will certainly walk out of it feeling good.