It was a good movie, in that it was well acted and the cinematography was good. But I don't think it really hit the mark. It never really sold me on the girls being in danger, and the atmosphere didn't really feel very tense to me.
I guess they were going for remote location + drunk men = danger. But it felt like just another friday night at the pub to me. It didn't feel like the girls should be afraid of the men in the pub. And I say that as a woman, in Australia.
Also, there was nothing that really tied this story to the outback. This could have been set in the city with exactly the same story. There are plenty of suburban places in Australia where there are no daily buses, or there are other reasons to be stuck in town for a couple of days. And to be honest those girls were not really stuck there. Sure the bus wasn't coming for two days, but we saw in the overhead shot when they arrived that this was not a small town. I'm sure they could have found accomodation elsewhere or arranged for alternative transport.
I had some other issues with things in the movie.
That the only work available for them was a remote job at a pub is total BS. There are so many places in Australia that hire backpackers and people on working holiday visas. Fruit picking, farm stays etc. There's always work.
The girls are meant to be really close friends, close enough that they share a bed (platonically) at various times, but we never really see a lot of evidence that friendship outside a few key moments. The friendship felt very two dimensional.
I also felt let down by the lack of women at the pub. Even in mining towns in Australia there are women. Women work in the mining industry. Even young women. But most of the women in this movie were caricature's of that trope that you have to be backwards, old and slightly crazy to be living in rural Australia.
I also had trouble with the ending. Which I will spoiler cut:
why did they set the pub on fire? the owner might have been asshole who didn't pay his staff or suppliers but he did not cause the girls any harm. It was just a random group of men who were being creepy. The owner was not at fault for anything that happened in the movie, and setting the pub on fire was just overkill, like the people who wrote the movie didn't know how to end it.
I've been binge watching this series over the past couple of weeks (up to S7 at the time of this review), and the first few seasons were fine, but as the seasons progress the more soap opera the show becomes. Relationship drama and more relationship drama! Also, most if not all of the doctors are problematic in their health care. They regularly break the rules and get away with it! Some of their practices are very unethical too.
Also, they are constantly trying to one up each other. "I have this idea of how to treat your patient and its clearly the better option" happens every episode. Even the student doctors and nurses think they know better than surgeons with decades of experience a lot of the time.
And the lack of privacy for some patients is terrible. Just the other day I watched an episode where a woman was going into labour. She was placed on a bed, and then a doctor went to examine how dilated she was, asked her to open her legs, while he reached in to check.... all in full view of the nurses station! No curtain was drawn, no privacy was given.
Most of the cases interesting at least, but some of the stories do seem repetitive. I actually checked to make sure I wasn't watching a repeat once or twice in season 6 because I could swear I watched the episode before.
Its all just so downhill from the first few seasons.
Kinda terrible. I've seen all the previous versions of Cheaper by the Dozen and this was by far the worst.
Lets start with Kate, the ex-wife of the lead male character Paul. Kate always seems to be hanging around the house where Paul and Zoey live, but there is no explanation for why Paul seems to have full custody and why Kate doesn't seem to have any. She is constantly called "the sitter" as if she is just around to baby sit, which she does, poorly.
Then there is Dom, Zoey's ex-husband who ends up being a jerk threatening to take custody of his children away after the daughter sneaks out to visit a boyfriend, and the son dresses as a punk/goth for a birthday party.
Zoey herself was such a strange character who at every turn took everyone's comments to be racist, or prejudicial in other ways, and she was always accusing people of being so. Then when someone actually was racist and actually did accuse one of the kids of being a thief, Zoey is just like, ok whatever and bewilderingly that person gets away with those comments several times over the course of the movie with barely a blink from Zoey. She also kept accusing Paul of leaving her out of things involving the business, but she didn't imo put a lot of effort into talking to Paul about what was going on with that. Its 2022 (in the movie) they could have been facetiming, zooming, txting, doing virtual tours of shop spaces for the franchise etc. There is absolutely no reason she couldn't have been just as involved as Paul was.
The kids themselves were charming and fun, but aside from a few "cute" moments nothing about the plot involved them (other than being a part of the family.)
Also I think somewhere along the way the movie forgot how many kids there were supposed to be.
The entire movie there only 10 kids:
(2) Kate and Paul's daughters: Ella and Harley
(1) Haresh, who was adopted by Kate and Paul who are his godparents (his parents were killed in a car accident)
(2) Zoey and Dom's children: DJ and and Deja
(4) then Zoey married Paul and they had two sets of twins, Luca and Luna, and Bronx and Bailey.
Thats 9 so far.
(1) Then Paul and Zoey took in Paul's nephew Seth.
So that makes 10 kids.
At the end of the movie we see they named their new restaurant "Baker's Dozen". Now a Baker's Dozen is actually 13. But there are only 10 kids. Since Dom invested in the "Sauce" I suppose the Baker's dozen is the 10 kids plus the three adults. Zoey, Paul and Dom. But thats actually confusing because that leaves Kate (who is still a part of the family) out.
And the entire joke of the title is a call back to the original 1950 movie, where someone asks the father "Hey, mister! How come you got so many kids?" and the father replies "Well, they come cheaper by the dozen, you know". The joke works in the first two movies because there are 12 kids. It does not work in this version, because there are only 10 kids.
Don't waste your time on this.
It starts off ok, kinda funny. But then it just can't decide what it wants to be. Is it a comedy? A thriller? a horror?
First I would like to say just how terrifying it would be for any phone to have the power it does in this movie. Like for real, this should be a horror movie.
The guy gets a phone and the phone slowly starts to take over his life. It verbally abuses and sexually harasses him. Eventually DMs his dick pics to work colleagues which gets him fired and then, it tries to kill him. And this is... funny? And at no time does the main character try to say to someone "oh my phone has gone psychotic" and try to get help. He just casually accepts that this is his new life now. And while he does try to ditch the phone, it was very half hearted. In fact in one scene he goes back for his phone because he doesn't know how to get home without it. And I mean, seriously? He doesn't know how to get home without his phone?
Add to this the stupid sex jokes that culminate in him having sex with the phone by repeatedly jamming the charger cord into it.
Then there is the really shallow problematic relationship he tries to have with someone he just met. This nice woman who doesn't seem at all surprised that this random stranger tracked her down at her work place and rang her. He eventually gets her number and within 30 seconds is declaring he is in love. He also tries to break up with her as soon as the ex-fiance is in the picture. Like, he was all, sorry, Im so insecure that you cant friends with your ex, so Im breaking up with you. She also doesn't seem to care that this guy knocks her ex-fiance out by hitting him in the neck for no reason other than he thought she was leaving with the ex-fiance (no self defence or anything). These are all RED FLAGS people. Red flags.
