Cheaper By The Dozen (PG, 94 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment): Stars: Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Piper Perabo, Hilary Duff, Tom Welling, Kevin Schmidt, Alyson Stoner, Jacob Smith, Liliana Mumy, Morgan York, Forrest Landis, Blake Woodruff, Brent Kinsman, Shane Kinsman, Ashton Kutcher.

Tom Baker (Martin), and his dutiful wife Kate (Hunt) are in the family way - to the tune of 12 beautiful, lively children. When Tom lands his dream job coaching football at his old university, he calls a family meeting. Following a majority verdict, he uproots the entire clan, despite protestations from older kids Charlie (Welling) and Lorraine (Duff).

The move proves unsettling and soon after, Kate learns that her new book on modern parenting is heading for the best-seller list. With Kate away from home for a couple of weeks on a promotional tour, Tom bravely struggles to cope on his own, juggling responsibilities to the football team and his children. Unfortunately, there simply aren't enough hours in the day and Tom's professional and personal lives feel the strain.

Cheaper By the Dozen is a loose remake of the 1950 comedy of the same name, drizzled with plenty of teen angst, confrontation and syrupy reconciliation. Director Shawn Levy orchestrates the madness with verve. Cheaper by The Dozen is inoffensive, entertaining, sentimental fluff.

Open Range (12, 133 mins, Universal Pictures Video): Stars: Robert Duvall, Kevin Costner, Annette Bening, Michael Gambon, Michael Jeter, Diego Luna, James Russo, Abraham Benrubi.

Boss Spearman (Duvall) grazes his cattle on the open range, aided by his longtime employee Charley Waite (Costner) and recent recruits Mose Harrison (Benrubi) and wet-behind-the-ears Button (Luna). Stopping outside a town run by a rancher named Baxter (Gambon), Boss and Charley find themselves in a whole heap of trouble when Baxter dispatches a posse of men to shoot the cattle grazers and their steers.

Bound together by the ''Code of the Open Range is a rootin' tootin' old-fashioned Western, about the camaraderie and loyalty of men who risk everything for a greater good.

Girl With A Pearl Earring (12, 95 mins, Pathe Distribution): Stars: Scarlett Johansson, Colin Firth, Tom Wilkinson, Judy Parfitt, Cillian Murphy, Essie Davis, Joanna Scanlan, Alakina Mann, David Morrissey, Anna Popplewell.

Scarlett Johansson's star shoots higher into the ascendant in Girl With A Pearl Earring, the film version of Tracy Chevalier's much loved bestseller. Cast as a servant girl who prefers silence to conversation, she is utterly beguiling, conveying her character's intense emotions through facial expressions and body language.

Girl With A Pearl Earring concerns the relationship, as imagined by Chevalier, between renowned Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer (Firth) and his muse, 16-year-old maid Griet (Johansson). Impressed by the girl's spirit and lust for life, Vermeer begins to use Griet as the inspiration for a series of paintings depicting women in domestic settings. In the process, she is immortalised as the central figure in one of his most famous works.

Girl With A Pearl Earring is an entrancing portrait of forbidden love that is at once heart-breaking and hauntingly beautiful.

Published: 27/05/2004