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Cheaper by the Dozen is a 2003 film starring Steve Martin about him, his wife and their twelve kids. Count 'em, twelve. It was directed by Shawn Levy.

It is a remake of a 1950s film, itself based on a 1948 book.

Plotwise, the family is happy, but packs up and moves an unspecified distance from a small town into the suburbs of Chicago so the Dad can pick up his dream job coaching his old college football team. The kids are variously disappointed by this, but grudgingly go along with it anyway. Having left home, the family gets another shock - Mom's gonna get her book published! Mom goes on a book tour, leaving the family in her husband's hands for a few days. Hilarity Ensues as total chaos erupts. One kid runs away, the family chases him down (leading to a nice You Are Not Alone moment), Dad realizes what his job has done to his kids and both he and his wife resolve to put family first.

It was released on December 25, 2003.

A sequel was released on December 21, 2005.

A remake starring Zach Braff and Gabrielle Union debuted on Disney+ on March 18, 2022.

This film provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc:
  • Charlie’s conflict of being bullied by the city kids goes unresolved and is never alluded to after it is revealed he was kicked off the football team.
  • The coaches mocking Charlie for being from farm country also seems to be setting him up to eventually prove himself as a football player, but it never happens and by the next film it is revealed he no longer plays.
• Accidental Misnaming: Tom gets Mark's name wrong twice throughout the film. Both times, Mark corrects him. The second time, Tom corrects himself after getting it wrong.
  Mark: Have you seen my frog, Dad?
  Tom: Sorry, Charlie. Nigel. Kyle.
  Mark: It's Mark.
  Tom: I knew that.
• Actually Pretty Funny: "You soaked his underwear in meat. That is so wrong. Funny, but wrong."
• Adoption Diss: Mark's nickname of "FedEx" is used by his siblings to imply this.
• Always Identical Twins: Averted with Jessica and Kim, but played straight with Kyle and Nigel.
• Ambiguously Related: The Baker kids. Especially Mark. Mark is usually picked on by his siblings, particularly Sarah, who calls him "FedEx" and claims that he is adopted and that the FedEx guy dropped him off because he doesn't fit in with this family. While Kate narrates all the kids she's given birth to, she mentions Mark, implying that he is in fact biologically related to the rest of the family but has a few recessive genetic traits (such as bad eyesight).
• Ambiguous Situation: Charlie's high school situation is mostly Out of Focus in the latter half of the film, with it being unclear exactly what happened offscreen. Kate is told by the kids that he's about to be expelled, with Lorraine even claiming that he's half a step away from Juvenile Hall. But are the kids telling the truth or just exaggerating to get her to rush back home? If true, just how far did things go? Did he finally have enough and beat down on one of his bullies when his sister wasn't around to stop him? Was he kicked off the football team for skipping school/practice or for an entirely different reason?
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • None of the Baker kids, especially Sarah, care very much when Mark's frog Beans dies while they're in the middle of a family argument, but when they find out he ran away, they're all shocked and actively take part in the search for him. Prior to that, Jake, Jessica, and Mike beat the tar out of a couple of bullies who picked on him.
  • Lorraine and Sarah also have a moment of this, where Mark says when he's reunited with everyone that he figured everyone hated him as Sarah and Lorraine seem to, only for Lorraine to say, "There are times when I'd want to kill Sarah, but I'd kill for her all the time."
  • When Jake, Jessica, Mike, and Kim find out Mark is being bullied at school, they confront the bullies and give them some Laser-Guided Karma.
• Benevolent Boss:
  • Shake seems to be this. He finds the new house for the Bakers, and despite being confused, is overall understanding when Tom decides to retire from his position at Alma Mater.
  • If Shake is at least guilty of being a little hardheaded and somewhat awkward around Tom's kids, Diane comes off as a genuinely fun person to be around and does VERY well by Kate as her publisher, not only arranging for a highly publicized book tour but also scoring her promotional appearances on major shows like Live! With Regis and Kelly and The Oprah Winfrey Show (although the latter is ultimately scrapped). This is the type of deal that many up-and-coming authors would kill for - and while Kate is reluctant to leave her kids for the amount of time required, she is still grateful and realizes that not agreeing would mean turning down a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Played with in that the film doesn't have a central villain or Big Bad but rather an eclectic group of minor antagonists who either unfairly judge the Baker family or do things to make their lives more difficult. None of them can exactly be called evil but can be categorized as either a Designated Villain (Shake, Hank, maybe Diane) or a Jerkass (Tina Shenk, the various school bullies, Charlie's football coaches, or - again - Hank).
• Big Fancy House: The Bakers' new home after they move in the film.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Bakers continue to live in the house they hate, with the kids going to school they don’t like, but they’re at least becoming closer like they were at their old house.
• Bookends: The film starts with Kate listing negative or neutral things the family associates with the number twelve, and the film ends with her listing positive things the family associates with the number twelve.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Sarah. Especially when she's torturing Lorraine.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In-Universe. While the Bakers are watching Tom's interview by Fox Sports, he looks into the camera and says, "Go to bed, kids!" Kate turns the TV off and sends the kids to bed.
  Kate: "OK, you heard the coach."
• Broken Pedestal: Lampshaded by Henry - who idolizes Charlie at the start of the film but calls him (and by extension the rest of his family) out for having turned into a jerk after they move away from their hometown.
• Butt-Monkey: Hank, who in his first appearance alludes to having been set on fire by the Baker kids. As soon as he shows up in the driveway of their new house, it pretty much all goes downhill.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • During a hectic day in the Baker house:
  Lorraine: You just used your own son as a vomit mop!
  • Charlie's speech during his heated confrontation with Tom qualifies as this, calling him out for prioritizing work over his family while claiming to be doing the opposite.
  Charlie: lf you want your shot at glory, if you wanna have it all, you do what you gotta do. But quit feeding us this line about being a happier and stronger family.
• Child Hater: Hank. He puts having a family after death and taxes, and outright calls the kids "monsters" when he and Nora walk in on a fight.
• Child Prodigy: Kim and Jessica are very brainy for their age.
• Christmas Epilogue: There's a brief scene of the Baker family having Christmas dinner together after Kate's closing narration but before the ending credits.
• Crime of Self-Defense: Mark's siblings standing up for him against his bullies gets them in trouble with the school and Tom.
• Despair Event Horizon: After the death of his frog, Mark runs away, fed up with all the fighting and feeling neglected by his family.
• Dramatic Irony: As Mark attacks Sarah for calling him FedEx and a huge verbal and physical fight between the Baker family breaks out, the cameraman preparing for the family's segment with Oprah asks his assistant "what's this segment called again?". He replies nervously, "One big happy family?". The cameraman then calls the people that work at Oprah and tell them not to come over to work at the Baker house due to ongoing chaos in the Baker family. And he tells him "it's the farthest thing from a happy family".
• Enfante Terrible: Again, Sarah.
• Establishing Character Moment: As the Shenks are approaching the new Baker house after they've just moved in, Tina reveals herself as a Jerkass in her first line when she notices the cartons and cups on the dashboard of the Baker van: "Oh, God. They're fast food people."
• Exiled to the Couch: Implied. Before it's revealed that Mark ran away from home, Kate tells Tom, "Feel free to sleep on the couch." Tom replies, "You read my mind", implying he was going to anyway.
• Exploding Closet: Kate tries to get a dress to wear for the family's interview with Oprah, which is located inside an overstuffed closet that was filled in by twins Kyle and Nigel in their way of cleaning up the house.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride is Tom's throughout the film. He moves the family to their new home simply so he can pursue his dream job and look good in front of Shake. He also tells Kate he can handle looking after the kids by himself when she goes to New York. Cue an Oh, Crap! from him when she tells him she's gone for at least two weeks, and he has to ask Nora for help, which means she has to give up time from her new job. Understandably, Kate is quite angry with Tom when she comes home. And all of this ends up leading to Mark running away. When Tom catches up to him, Mark tells Tom he didn't keep his promise of them becoming a happier and stronger family.
• Flat "What": Kate can only let out a confused "What?" when she learns from Tom that Charlie was kicked off his school's football team.
• Food and Animal Attraction: The kids prank Nora's boyfriend by dipping his underclothes in meat and setting the family dog on him.
• Foreshadowing:
  • A fairly obvious example in which Tom mentions in the first scene how the family could do with change—-of which a lot, of course, ends up happening over the course of the film: Shake's offer to Tom leads to the family moving houses, Kate's book is going to be published, Mark's frog dies, Mark runs away, and Tom eventually gives up his dream job for the family's sake.
  • Early on, when Kate hugs Mark but then gets distracted by Nigel and Kyle wrestling, she looks around for him and sees him cycling away. Mark later snaps and runs away from home when it looks to him like no one cares about him.
  • Mark's drawing of the Midland house that he shows to Tom, along with the caption, "My favorite place in the world is the Midland house". When he runs away, he plans on going there, and Tom realizes this thanks to a Meaningful Echo.
  • Mark is seen late in the film tending to Beans and at one point begging him not to die. Unfortunately, he does die and the argument that follows Sarah's rude outburst causes Mark to run away.
• Foil:
  • Shake and Tom. The opening narration establishes that the two are in a Friendly Rivalry, and their lives go in completely opposing directions. Shake gets the head coaching job at their alma mater while Tom has to settle for coaching a Division III team at a local college. Shake's not a family man by any stretch (although whether or not he has any children isn't outright stated), while Tom ends up with a family of twelve kids. Shake on the surface has all the material success that Tom would want, but much of Tom's arc involves him opting to choose his family over the glitz and glamour represented by the "dream job" that Shake gifts him.
  • Diane and Kate. Both are successful, professional women in the world of publishing, but Kate is a mother of twelve and is extremely reluctant to leave her family for any amount of time, whereas Diane openly admits that she can't even manage a boyfriend (like with Shake, it's not made clear if she has any kids of her own) and can't seem to understand why Kate's absence for two weeks would present a problem. Kate is rather serious and constantly worries about how Tom is holding up, while Diane - without the same kind of responsibilities in her life - is much more fun-loving and about living in the moment. There's also the racial component factoring into the comparison (Diane - as a black woman - likely had to work twice as hard in order to move up the ladder within the publishing world and intends to maximize the amount of hype Kate's book is getting in the media to boost its sales. Kate - by contrast - hasn't faced the kind of obstacles that Diane would have, and essentially fell into success with her book about raising a large family but is reluctant to even promote it).
  • Hank and Charlie. They’re both Mr. Fanservice types who think little of anyone besides themselves and suffer a Humiliation Conga. However, while Hank is a bit of Large Ham, Charlie is cold and humorless. Hank’s misfortunes also tend to be more potentially harmful than Charlie’s, but are treated as being in the wrong less. And in the end, Mark running away brings Hank’s selfishness to a head where Norah breaks up with him, whereas it’s implied to have made Charlie decide that he actually wants to be a part of his family after all.
• From the Mouths of Babes: Nigel and Kyle call Shake a "hot dog" in Shake's first appearance, but only because they'd heard Kate call him that and are probably not aware of what she meant.
• Funny Background Event:
  • As Dylan is taken to the hospital after receiving a broken arm courtesy of Tom accidentally falling on him, Tina (as she tells Tom "Your children are never playing with Dylan again!") can be seen bumping into a door, proceeding to nurse her injured butt as she walks alongside the gurney.
  • In the gym scene, the two jocks who stare down Charlie each get a moment like this. One of them can be seen side eyeing him after looking him up and down disapprovingly, while the other gets immediately distracted by (presumably) one of the cheerleaders and stops to check out her rear end.
• Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: Implied in the "In Too Deep" montage when Charlie's teammates break into his locker while he's showering after practice and stuff it with corn on the cob. When he opens it, the corn tumbles out and there's very visibly nothing else inside, indicating that his clothes were taken and presumably hidden (although exactly where - or what Charlie did directly afterwards to get them back - is very much an Ambiguous Situation).
• Groin Attack: A variation, as the kids steal Hank's boxers and soak them in raw meat as he waits for his clothes to be dried, before siccing the dog onto him at the table.
• Happily Married: Tom and Kate are very much in love, which plays a major factor in them being so happy despite their kids. They have shared goals, they both wanted a big family, they work very well together, they know how to give and take and let the other do their job, and their love life is still going great.
  Tom [after an extremely hectic morning] : Were you just checking me out?
  Kate: Maybe I was.
  Tom: Twelve kids later, and we still got the heat!
• Heroes' Frontier Step: After Mark disappears, the whole family puts aside their issues to go look for Mark after he tearfully runs away from home, proving that despite their issues, they still care for one another.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Oprah Winfrey. Her physical absence is somewhat noticeable given how heavy the film is on celebrity cameos - and considering how her talk show provides a major catalyst for the plot. When the production team member calls to scrap the segment because the Baker house has devolved into chaos (clearly not acting like the "one big happy family" that had been advertised), it's implied that he's speaking with Oprah herself and is warning her not to come over to the house.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • Mark gets this throughout the film. He’s constantly belittled, forgotten, and ignored.
  • Hank gets the worst of it from the moment he sets foot in the Baker home (and is stated to have undergone this treatment with the kids' pranks before).
  • This happens to Charlie whenever he sets foot anywhere near the premises of his new school.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Played straight with the Baker kids, averted with Kate's sister, who died as a child in the backstory.
• In Name Only: The only similarity it has with the book is that there are twelve kids.
• Ironic Echo: In the same scene. After Kate tells Tina Mark has run away, Tina says that twelve is just too big a number of kids to have. Kate throws the insult back in her face at the end of the scene.
• It's All About Me:
  • Hank, who is a self-absorbed model and actor who worries about what the Baker kids will do to him when he and Nora visit (to be honest, though, he is right to worry, after they set his pants on fire). Nora doesn't see him for what he is until Mark runs away and Hank doesn't care at all, preferring to watch a commercial of himself on TV instead of going to help.
  • Charlie rarely thinks of anyone other than himself until the film's end. Even his girlfriend Beth, whom he does genuinely care about, isn't the main reason why he's upset about moving, as he makes very clear to Kate.
  Kate: Charlie, Evanston is only four hours away. Beth can come and visit.
  Charlie: This isn't just about Beth, Mom. - My whole LIFE is here at Midland!
  
  • Tom, but to a lesser extent and mostly from the kids' perspectives. He moves the family to Chicago so that he can pursue his dream job when it's obvious none of the kids want to go. He says they will be a happier and stronger family as a result, but none of the kids buy it and opt to act out at every given opportunity so that it doesn't happen. Tom does get big-headed from his newfound celebrity as a university coach, but his decision to take the job was also to provide for his ten plus kids and to set up for their future (he mentions that a perk of his job is that university employees can enroll their kids for free). It is also established that he had passed up similar opportunities because it would have meant uprooting his family.
• Jerkass:
  • Mark’s bully Quinn, and the unnamed bully (played by Jared Padalecki) of Charlie (when they both go to his new schools). This was even lampshaded by Jared when talking about the character during his interview on The Bonnie Hunt Show ("I was a big jerk!").
  • Tina as well. It's pretty clear from the off that she doesn't like the Bakers because of how many kids they have and their parenting methods. She also seems a snob that fusses over Dylan and shows no sympathy to Kate when Mark has run away. Bill, on the other hand, is much friendlier and promptly agrees to help with the search party.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • The younger kids are clearly shown to be in the wrong to try chasing Hank away with pranks, but they were right about him being an overall jerk and not worthy of Nora.
  • Hank gets a moment like this when he tells Nora he doesn't want kids and gestures to the Baker kids downstairs fighting as Exhibit A. While he's probably crossing the line by calling them monsters, the kids haven't exactly done much to endear him to the idea of starting a family. Not everyone wants to have children or large families - and this mindset has become more accepted in recent years than it was at the time the film was released.
  • Charlie, when he gives Tom Baker his "Reason You Suck" Speech for prioritizing work before his family while pretending he's doing the opposite - although his delivery could have used some work (in most cases, a kid calling one of their parents "a loser" during a heated argument isn't going to end well).
  • Coach Bricker isn't exactly wrong when he tells Charlie that he can't expect things to be the same as at his old school, although similar to the last example he could have been a little nicer about it.
• Jerkass Realization: All of the Bakers have one when they discover that Mark has run away from home.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Most of the kids, who pull pranks and don't care much when Mark's frog dies, but they still feel bad when he ran away, and so still see him as very much a brother and member of the family.
  Jake: Without you, we wouldn't be the twelve Bakers anymore. We'd be like... eleven.
  • Also, when they find out Mark is being bullied, Jake, Mike, Jessica, and Kim are quick to avenge him despite knowing that it will earn them Tom's wrath once he hears about it.
  • Even Tom gets hints of this. He moves the family to Chicago even when none of the kids want to do it, just so he can pursue his dream job and look good in front of Shake (there’s a throwaway line late in the film about Shake was a superstar in college, whereas Tom was a loser), and becomes something of a workaholic so doesn't see the kids' side when they're either ignored or punished for fighting in school, but of course, he still cares very much about the family and Kate and eventually gives up the coaching job so he can get another job closer to home.
  • Charlie is apparently intended to be this (getting called "a jerk" verbatim by his own brother before his Heel–Face Turn), although the trope would probably more apply to the sequel where his rebelliousness and sarcasm is more evenly balanced with his better qualities.
• Karma Houdini: The guys who bully Charlie - as well as the two coaches who give him a hard time - don’t get any comeuppance in the film proper and, if anything, win out by successfully driving him off the football team. Could count as subverted under the interpretation that Charlie ended up happier and in a healthier mental state after leaving the team.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Sarah telling Mark that no one cares about Beans dying, and then calling him FedEx again. Mark shouts at her to stop calling him that, then goes at her, sparking a fight between most of the kids and their parents.
  • Tina was already established to be an unpleasant person but when Kate reports to the Shenks that Mark is missing and asks for help, Tina smugly comments that she always knew one of the Baker kids would go missing. This is an incredibly cruel thing to say to a woman whose son is missing and even Bill seems to take it as a last straw.
• Kid Has a Point:
  • When Tom confronts Charlie about the latter being kicked off the football team and attempting to run away back to their old home, Charlie goes into a "The Reason You Suck" Speech where he tells Tom that while he may claim he took the coaching job for the good of the family, the truth is it was less about that and more about wanting to get some glory at his alma mater after being a benchwarmer during his time there. Later on, Charlie apologizes for what he said, and Tom says he was right (to which Charlie doesn’t exactly argue).
  • When Tom catches up to Mark after he runs away, Mark tells Tom he didn't keep his promise to the family because they're no happier than they were. Tom admits he's right and they reconcile.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The bullies who knocked Mark's glasses off and pulled his hat down over his eyes get their comeuppance when Jake, Mike, Jessica, and Kim find out and give them a taste of their own medicine, even if it results in them being punished for it.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Dylan gets injured by Tom falling on him. It was still his best birthday ever.
• Man Hug: Tom and Shake the first time they're onscreen together, at the start of the scene where Shake pitches his offer to Tom.
• Massive Numbered Siblings:
  • The Baker clan has, well, a dozen, seven sons (Charlie, Henry, Jake, Mark, Mike, Nigel, and Kyle) and five daughters (Nora, Lorraine, Sarah, Jessica, and Kim).
  • And yet, it doesn't make them a Baker's dozen.
  • According to Kate's voice-over early on, Tom had seven brothers and sisters growing up, and after Kate's sister died, she wished she had seven brothers and sisters as well.
• Meaningful Echo: Shortly after moving to Chicago, Mark draws a picture of their old house, titled , "My Favorite Place In The World is the Midland House" (not that he’s portrayed as a big artist). After he runs away, the police tell Tom that they searched train and bus stations. He claims that his son wouldn't take a train or a bus. Nora then says that she always wanted to run away to Chicago, which was her "favorite place in the world". This makes him realize exactly where Mark has gone.
• Middle Child Syndrome: An interesting example combined with Out of Focus; Henry and Sarah are never shown going to school, while the rest of the kids are.
• Mood Whiplash: Two, involving hugs.
  • As Mark is leaving for school at the start and tells Kate he doesn't feel like he fits in the Baker family, Kate tells him he does fit and hugs him, then seconds later gets distracted by Nigel and Kyle wrestling on the lawn.
  • After the Oprah segment is canceled, Jessica witnesses Tom tell Kate he was going to sleep on the couch and asks if Tom and Kate will get a divorce. Tom wordlessly picks her up and hugs her. Then comes a big moment of shock when Kate appears and tells them Mark has run away.
• My Beloved Smother: Tina acts this way towards Dylan, as she wanted "one perfect child", though it's implied Dylan wanted siblings.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Tom visibly experiences this after Kate tells him that Mark has run away, prompting him to tell Charlie that he was right about the "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Never My Fault: The kids consistently blame their father for their unhappiness and rarely fess up to the chaos they have created at the expense of each other and their parents. To be fair to them, the cause of some of their unhappiness is Tom's fault, though much of the chaos is squarely down to the kids.
• Naked People Are Funny: Played straight during the "In Too Deep" montage, as Charlie gets pranked by his teammates while practically naked (they laugh hysterically at him after he finds his clothes have been switched out with corn on the cob).
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:
  • Tom's attempt to get childcare fails in large part because he keeps factoring his adult daughter (who no longer even lives under their roof anymore) and two teenage kids into the equation, driving the number up to twelve. While having nine kids would still be a daunting number for any childcare agency, Tom is implied to have had the kind of financial resources that getting hired help in for a short period of time shouldn't pose this sort of problem. His failure to do so results in him having to take drastic measures to meld his new job in with his responsibilities at home. Shake and his university backers aren't exactly amused by this.
  • While Kate doesn't quite have her husband's grasp of the Idiot Ball, agreeing to let the film crew for the Oprah Winfrey Show into her house to film as segment - despite having already been briefed by her kids about how chaotic things had gotten at home - proves to be a terrible idea and causes her a great deal of embarrassment. Surely bringing the kids with her to the studio in Chicago (which is literally the next town over from Evanston) would have been the wiser choice and more risk averse.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Played with. When Jake, Jessica, Kim, and Mike find out Mark is being bullied at school, they give the bullies a dose of Laser-Guided Karma by beating them up. It still gets them punished both by their principal, and then by Tom, who grounds them.
• No Name Given:
  • None of Charlie's bullies at his school are named, although Shawn Levy references the main bully by the name Luke in the DVD commentary track.
  • Similarly, the two high school coaches who give Charlie a hard time also go unnamed in the film proper. But the main coach (played by Rex Linn) falls under All There in the Script, with Linn being credited as Coach Bricker.
• Noodle Incident: Before Nora and her fiancé Hank visit the Baker family, Kate tells the kids not to burn his pants again.
• No Sympathy:
  • Sarah telling Mark no one cares about Beans after Mark tells Kate Beans has died.
  • Tina to Kate after Mark has run away, saying that twelve children are too many.
  • Hank to Nora, also after Mark has run away. This leads to her breaking up with him.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Tom at the beginning during breakfast when he sees Beans in the lamp above the table, with Mark reaching towards it with his net.
  • Tom when he tries to grab Dylan hanging from the chandelier and ends up hanging from it himself.
  • Tom has one when Kate calls him from New York to say she will be staying there for longer than expected.
  • Henry has a brief moment when he slips on a puddle on Nigel's vomit on the kitchen floor.
  • Many people at Dylan's party when the snake the Baker kids got for him escapes from its box.
  • When a helium tank gets knocked onto the bounce house, Tom feels it overinflate beneath his feet and he realizes it's gonna blow, just as the bounce house explodes, sending Tom and everyone else flying. Then Dylan gets one when he sees Tom is about to land on him.
  • The chandelier contractor after he falls off the ladder and sees the chandelier about to fall on top of him. Again.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Kate's parents due to her sister dying in childhood.
• Parents as People: Tom and Kate obviously love and do their best to take care of their kids, but having their attention divided between all twelve of them causes the two to make mistakes.
• Pay Evil unto Evil:
  • The kids' pranks against Hank, who is more Jerkass than evil, but it still counts.
  • Mark's bullies are given a dose of Laser-Guided Karma when Jake, Mike, Jessica, and Kim find out what they did to Mark.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: A variation. Mark is seen late in the film begging Beans not to die. Unfortunately, Beans does die.
• Practically Different Generations: Nora Baker, the eldest of the twelve children, is a 22-year-old adult who has left home and lives with her boyfriend. The youngest Baker children, twins Kyle and Nigel, are about five or six years old (their dad Tom finally got a vasectomy shortly before the twins were conceived, but the procedure hadn't quite taken yet). All the other kids fall somewhere in between the nearly two-decade age gap.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: The kids messing with Hank is played for laughs, but when Charlie is on the receiving end of a childish prank from his teammates, it's clearly not intended to be funny. It doesn't help that Charlie can be seen chuckling at Hank as he struggles with the dog, but when he's the butt of the joke himself later in the film, he doesn't exactly take it well (to be clear, BOTH are wrong - but considering that one of the kids' gags involved setting Hank on fire, stuffing corn into someone's locker sounds pretty tame by comparison).
• Rage Breaking Point:
  • Mark reaches it after Beans has died, and Sarah cruelly tells him no one cares. This also serves as the family's collective breaking point, as they all get into a fight that is so bad, the Oprah crew begs her not to show up.
  Mark: Mom, Beans is dead.
  Sarah: Nobody cares about your stupid frog right now, FedEx, okay?!
  Mark: STOP CALLING ME THAT! (tries to attack her)
  • Charlie is relatively stoic and even timid when being taunted by the bullies at his new school but when the main bully targets his sister and makes a joke about their parents, it proves the final straw for him to completely lose it on them. Only his Lorraine's intervention keeps things from escalating.
  Bully: Cute car seats baker! [Charlie looks up sheepishly from out of his car]
  Lorraine: You know, we had to take our little brothers to nursery school, if that's okay with you!
  Bully: *showing faux concern* Well, what happened, did mommy and daddy go back to the farm?!
  Charlie:' You know what? This whole harass the hick thing is getting old! [slams his door shut and charges at the bullies]
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Tom gets one hell of a speech like this from Charlie after he confronts him over getting kicked off the football team. Charlie calls out his claim that he was thinking of his family when he took his new job and angrily claims that the real reason was because Tom "was a loser in college" who wanted his last shot at glory.
• Rule of Pool: Invoked by the kids as the first part of the plan to get rid of Hank when he first arrives, resulting him in being tripped with a garden hose and landing in a kiddie pool.
• The Runaway:
  • Mark becomes this after Beans dies and Sarah tells him no one cares.
  • During the search for Mark, Nora reveals she ran away from Midland a few times growing up, and considered getting on a train to go to Chicago.
• Running Gag: The family's many attempts to install a new chandelier, usually with it falling atop the contractor.
• Scary Black Man: In the gym scene, Charlie briefly gets stared down by an unnamed black character in a durag who then side eyes him behind his back. He can later be seen lurking in the background of the locker room during the corn prank (if the goal is to make it clear the Baker kids are out of their element moving from a small town to the city, the narrative would never be complete without at least one ambiguously threatening black character).
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Kate does this to the book tour in New York when the kids call her after the party scene, and Sarah tells her to come home immediately, because of how bad things are.
  • The camera crew setting up for a taping of the family on the Oprah Winfrey show when the family finally collapses into a full-blown fight right in front of them. To add to their disbelief, the segment was to be called "One Big Happy Family".
  Cameraman: (Calling Oprah) No, you do not want to come down here. No, it's the farthest thing from a happy family.
  • Charlie tries to do this by saying he wants to go back to Midland and has a heated confrontation with Tom who tells him he is not going to walk out on the family and is not dropping out of school. Charlie backs off but tells him he is leaving as soon as he graduates.
  • Mark does this by running away after Beans dies, saying no one cares about him and it's not until the evening of the same day that anyone notices he has gone.
• Sexual Karma:
  • Tom and Kate happily lampshade that they're very comfortable with each other, which is a major factor in how they got to twelve in the first place. They're seen flirting with and being feely numerous times, to the point that their teenage daughter is semi-scandalized:
  Lorraine: At least wait until I leave the room!
• Shaking the Rump: Kate does this in front of Tom in one scene ("Twelve kids later and we've still got the heat!").
• Shirtless Scene: Charlie (Tom Welling's character) briefly appears shirtless (unsurprisingly, given how often his character on Smallville did.)
• Show-and-Tell Antics: Discussed when Kate Baker tells one of her sons, Mike, that he has show and tell at school while reminding him that "body parts do not count."
• Shout-Out: Nora's line referencing the family game Appleschmear as "the game my Great-Grandma Gilbreth invented" is a direct reference to the name of the family featured in the original Cheaper by the Dozen film, based on the book authored by the children of inventor Frank Gilbreth.
• Single-Minded Twins: Both pairs of twins act quite similar to each other. It's more noticeable with Kyle and Nigel, since they're identical.
• Surprise Pregnancy: In the backstory, Tom and Kate had planned on having eight children, but then Jessica and Kim turned out to be twins. They were fine with settling at nine until they had too much to drink at a party and Mike was born nine months later. Tom finally decided to get a vasectomy, but he ignored the doctor explaining that he needed to wait a few weeks for the procedure to be effective, leading to Nigel and Kyle.
• Take That!: A deleted scene had Hank and one of the Oprah Winfrey Show crew members (played by Dax Shepard) briefly converse about what it's like working for Harpo Studios and Oprah herself, and it gets pretty awkward.
  Hank: No benefits? It's a shame. Got you living in a cardboard box, old Oprah does, huh?
  Cameraman: Yeah, while she's up on the hill, you know? *laughs awkwardly with Hank*
• Those Two Guys:
  • Oprah’s cameramen, who are always seen together and make the joint decision to scrap their Oprah Show segment.
  • The two high school football coaches, who move in unison when mocking Charlie for being from farm country.
• The Three Certainties in Life: Hank notes, "All I'm saying is families are inevitable; they're like death or taxes."
• Triumphant Reprise:
  • Kate listing positive things to associate with the number twelve at the end of the film, as opposed to neutral or negative things as she did at the beginning.
  • Before Kate calls Tom after finding out what has happened while she has been in New York, the scoreboard shows the Stallions lost against a team called the Pythons, when the situation at home is incredibly stressful. At the end, when Tom gives up his job, the same scoreboard is seen again and this time, the Stallions have won against a team called the Ridgebacks, and shortly after that comes a big family hug on the field.
• Two Words: I Can't Count:
  Jake: Dude, two words: need new skates.
  Kate: Dude, three words: paper route.
  • And later:
  Tom: Dude, two words: manners.
• The Un-Favorite: Mark, a.k.a. "FedEx", at least in the eyes of his siblings.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • Mike at Dylan's party. Jake tells him to go get the football they got for Dylan so they can play with it. When he does, he knocks some of the presents over, and the Brazilian mud viper they also got for him escapes. The resulting panic causes Tom to realize the kids have gone, and to enlist the players to round them up, as well as, in trying to get Sarah, Tom ending up breaking Dylan's arm by accident.
  • Sarah dishes out a Kick the Dog moment to Mark after Beans dies, causing him to lash out in anger. This causes a massive fight that causes the scheduled Oprah segment to have to be canceled and cause an upset Mark to run away from home.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Two in the same scene. Nigel sees red sauce on Mike's athletic cup and vomits on the floor thinking that it’s blood. Henry comes in and slips on the vomit, causing him to throw up too.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What ever did happen to the Baker family’s old house?
  • Hank is last scene arguing with Norah when she finds out Mark ran away, with no actual confirmation of their breakup. The sequel clarifies it happened, however.
  • Charlie’s bullies disappear midway through the film without any resolution of the school situation.
  • Dylan isn’t shown or even mentioned after he and his dad go to help look for Mark. It can be assumed that he and the Baker kids are still friends, however, despite Tina’s insistence that they stay away.
• World of Ham: Pretty much comes with the territory for a film starring Steve Martin and prominently featuring Ashton Kutcher (and the kids could be pretty hammy themselves, at some points).
• You Are Grounded!: Tom says this almost word for word to the kids when their poor behavior gets out of hand. The kids wind up sneaking out to go to Dylan's birthday party.