Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
When a widow with 10 kids impulsively marries a widower with eight kids of his own, the 18 kids - including (left to right) Kelly (Haley Ramm), Christina (Katija Pevec), Harry (Dean Collins), Phoebe (Danielle Panabaker), Naoko (Miki Ishikawa), and Aldo (Nicholas Roget-King) - trying to break up the marriage discover that families can't be built in a day. -
CONTRIBUTED
YOURS, MINE and Ours is a remake and it feels like it. It doesn't merely feel like a remake of the 1968 film. It feels like a remake of every movie and/or television show about a big family that was ever made. It also feels like a remake of many camp-based movies from the 1980s.
As such, if it was not for the strength of its stars, Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo, Yours, Mine and Ours would simply have shook then imploded under the weight of the hackneyed comedy which populates it. So thankfully, Quaid and Russo are very likeable people and they make the movie more enjoyable than it deserves to be. That is, they make the movie tolerable.
Yours, Mine and Ours is directed by Raja Gosnell whose most successful directorial project so far was 1999's Never Been Kissed. Ron Burch and David Kidd team up to create the screenplay.
OLD FIRESTICKS
The movie is the story of a widowed captain and father of eight children, Frank Beardsly (Quaid) who meets up with his high school sweetheart, Helen North who happens to be a mother to 10 children. As with the venerable case of old firesticks, when they run into each other, Frank and Helen's passion ignites. Being pretty people and therefore not having to worry about silly matters like financing 18 children, they marry. The flick then follows their sojourn into what should have been marital bliss.
As with far too many flicks that say they are for the family, Yours, Mine and Ours speaks more easily to children, especially as they are young enough to find over-used clichés refreshing. Adult audiences may well find it occasionally mildly amusing, as it does manage to dredge up some comedic moments, which are too rare and pass too quickly. It seems that pigs are not really as funny as one may expect, unless of course, they are Babe.
What passes for humour in this flick is a heavy dosage of running about, throwing things and having Quaid fall into every gooey liquid imaginable. Indeed, it seems the comic gist was borrowed from Nickelodeon (of course not the good smart bits like Hey Arnold! or The Rugrats). Indeed a marathon bout of The Three Stooges would have had more comic finesse than Yours, Mine and Ours.
If one has watched the original, or any episode of The Brady Bunch or even Cheaper by the Dozen, one has seen much more of this flick than one needs to. It is a classic case of how hackneyed Hollywood can get when they take what may have been a good idea, suck out all the juice, microwave it and then send it back out to the public. It is one of those movies that make you hold your head and cry, "Oh not another remake!"
