He's Hollywood's equivalent of the cure for the common cold. A celluloid quick-fix that can switch a movie from the worthless to the worthwhile.

If your comedy outing isn't tickling ribs then he's the guy to call. When it looks like the box office isn't beckoning your baby then he's the funnyman to phone.

He is, of course, Eugene Levy, the fella whose Bloomingdale's salesman made Serendipity bearable and lent American Pie some comic gravitas as Jim’s dad.

He's also had a hand in writing two of the funniest films in many a year - folk-singing spoof A Mighty Wind and the Crufts mickey-take Best In Show.

After providing the comedy remedy for The Man, he's now been roped into this sequel of the Steve Martin outing Cheaper By The Dozen...and he's just the tonic.

Football coach Tom Baker (Martin) and his author wife Kate (Hunt) have taken their jumbo-sized clan on a summer holiday to a Lake Winnetka retreat.

However, after pitching up at a dilapidated old hovel he discovers he's sharing the site with his nemesis Jimmy Murtaugh (Levy), an ultra-competitive dad-of-eight with a trophy wife in the unfeasibly curvy form of Carmen Elektra.

What kicked off as a break turns into a battle of wills as Tom and Jimmy embark on a titanic struggle of one-upmanship with their respective kids dragged into the fray.

Cheaper By The Dozen was one of the better recent outings for Martin - whose golden years of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Roxanne are well behind him - and the match with Levy's Mr Fix-it is a sound move.

The two funnymen spark off one another handsomely and there's enough wit in the script to make this a rare thing - a sequel that is the equal of the original.

Hilary Duff, Piper Perabo, Tom Welling and Kevin Schmidt are back for the ride to ensure fans of the 2003 original don't feel devalued by too many cheap laughs.

Tim Evans