Starring Steve Martin, Eugene Levy, Bonnie Hunt, and Carmen Electra. Rated G.

Pssst, moms: you might want to give this one a pass. With its focus on paternal hand-wringing, pissing contests, and Carmen Electra's killer rack, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is geared more toward dad's movie outing with the kids.

In director Adam Shankman's sequel to the 2003 flick that introduced modern moviegoers to Tom, Kate, and their brood of 12, the Bakers find themselves vying with a rival family of eight for academic and personal supremacy during summer vacation. The entire wholesome Baker gang is back. Alas, most female characters are way back, where the filmmakers apparently feel they belong: in skimpy clothing, in the grocery aisle, insecure, impregnated, or in wet T-shirts. At one point, even sainted mother figure Kate (Bonnie Hunt), despite having piously suckled 12 bairns, is drenched with orange juice and revealed to have large gazongas. It's a sexist plot point designed to explain to the audience why her husband, you know, keeps the old gal around when his nemesis has acquired a younger model, played by Electra. But never mind. By a landslide the biggest boobs in this flick are Steve Martin and Eugene Levy.

In the 1950 version of Cheaper by the Dozen, based on the real-life exploits of America's Gilbreth family, the dad, played by Clifton Webb, ended up going to that great rec room in the sky. Martin's pater has, however, lived on to have a showdown with Levy's equally competitive Jimmy Murtaugh, a snobbish, rich landowner who was jealous of Baker as a youth and aims to top him now. Two comic bigwigs plus four C cups and 20 children should add up to splendid mayhem. But apart from some spit-up and remasticated sausage rolls and some dog-leg humping that doesn't become Electra, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is only moderately ribald.

Call it the kid-fatigue factor. After Yours, Mine and Ours, The Pacifier, and Harry Potter, among others, the cacophony of whinging youths and the sight of umpteen table settings and gargantuan frying pans heaped with scrambled eggs no longer make for jolting audio-visuals. That's left up to Martin's physical flummoxing and Levy's nasal condescension as they posture idiotically and annoy the hell out of each other in that snivelly way only grown male comics can.

The result is that the various romances and rebellions of their combined offspring are secondary.

The real issues here are those of fathers' unrealistic expectations-mainly, their inability to see their wives and daughters as capable females with their own ambitions and sexuality. Come to think of it, some dads won't like it so much after all.