You know, I have to say I enjoyed this movie a whole lot better than I thought I would. I mean I knew I was going to see it as soon as I saw the trailer, but it touched me how genuine some of the moments were. The basic story is that Lt. Shane Wolf (Vin Diesel) has to protect 5 kids (ages ranging from 16-3) while their mother is helping the government after the father is murdered for some satellite program he invented. We quickly learn that Vin never had any sort of normal childhood because he was raised almost entirely in the army which leads to several enjoyable moments where he has to cope with reality as the kids experience it everyday including life at a kindergarten through 12 grade school, girl scouts, and diapers (the 2 youngest kids are both still in diapers). Aside from the comedy, the one moment I really appreciated was Shane’s heart to heart with the oldest girl, Zoe (Brittany Snow) where she just breaks down and cries (what I felt were) genuine tears of loss for her father.

The rest of the movie is kind of your standard boilerplate family comedy (including the obligatory romance for Shane (with the kid’s principal for crying out loud!)) but it felt like a breath of fresh air for me and I really enjoyed it. They even managed to include some musical theatre comedy which really kicked it up a notch for me and just really brought the movie together for me.

But in the end, this movie is for everyone who wants to see Vin Diesel make a complete ass of himself (of course for SOME people (not me) he already did that with Chronicles of Riddick). No I’m kidding. Everyone who likes family comedies should definitely see this one.