Disney's latest take on "Cheaper by the Dozen" — there was also a 2003 version starring Steve Martin, which was a remake of the 1950 original — puts a mixed-race spin on the tale of a family bursting at the seams.
While no one is going to confuse it with a hard-hitting discussion on race, the film's creative team — which includes "Black-ish" writers Kenya Barris and Jenifer Rice-Genzuk, as well as "Black-ish" and "Mixed-ish" director Gail Lerner — does manage to sprinkle in some lessons about the complexities of racial identity among the soft-peddled messages about family, understanding and togetherness.
Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union play Paul and Zoey Baker, a couple whose combined family includes nine kids, including their two sets of twins, an adoptee and two kids each from their previous marriages. That makes 11 in all; the dozenth is either Paul's free-spirited ex-wife Kate (Erika Christensen), who often acts as a loopy live-in babysitter, or Seth (Luke Prael), Paul's sister's kid, who comes to live with the Bakers when his mom goes off to rehab, a story point that is mentioned once but not dwelled upon.
