Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

People are voting emotionally.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid) returns to his hometown of New London to run the Coast Guard Academy. He's a widower and runs a tight ship with his 8 kids. While on a date, he runs into his childhood sweetheart artist Helen White-North (Rene Russo) who has 10 children and on a date of her own. She's also a widower and adopted 6 of her kids. They reconnect, quickly marries and move into the big lighthouse from their past. Frank brings along his housekeeper Mrs. Munion (Linda Hunt). The kids don't get along and decide to join forces to split up the couple.There are just so many kids. There are so many of them that most remain nameless unknown figures to me. The two oldest girls have a good side story but that's rare. The older kids have some more things to do but the kids become a blob mass. I like the general outline of the movie. It doesn't have much comedy that works but the story is a little heart warming. That is until the last act when I lose all interest in the movie. The whole movie is so predictable on auto pilot and I didn't care so much about the individual characters.

According to Roger Ebert's 2005 review, he thought a lot of the movie was contrived. I disagree. Yes, it's predictable, but that is a given in this kind of family movie. For a while, I thought this was not going to be anything special, but all the expected things that could, and do, happen, make this entertaining. Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo are no Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, but they do have chemistry, which Ebert thought they didn't have. This is basically the same movie as Cheaper by the Dozen, so what in the world was he (and most critics) expecting? If you are looking for another of that movie, you won't be disappointed. *** out of ****

The original version with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball is one of our favorites and I, for one, am glad they didn't try to remake that story with a new cast. This is really a different story built on the same premise: a widow and widower -- each with a lot of children -- fall in love, get married, and the children are suddenly part of a new and much larger family. Unlike the original, the children don't get a chance to see this coming before it happens. The animosity is instantaneous, particularly since the Beardsley children are used to structure and organization in their lives whereas the North children have been very free and loose. The bonding of familial friendships between the children comes through their common purpose -- to destroy the relationship between their parents. There is something very profound about seeing two enemy groups come together for a common goal only to discover that they don't hate each other at all. A lot of the slapstick is over the top, but it is an entertaining 90 minutes with a message that will never grow old. I am glad to have both versions in my library.

When Hollywood remakes an old movie, they usually have to spice up the plot to accommodate contemporary audiences. The remake of the Lucille Ball & Henry Fonda family comedy "Yours, Mine, & Ours" toplining Rene Russo & Dennis Quaid eliminates scenes that today's audiences might find offensive. Indeed, the Motion Picture Association of America would have changed the remake's family friendly PG rating to a mature-oriented PG-13 had those scenes been duplicated. The 37 years between the original and its riotous rehash reveals much about what a G rating meant in 1968 and the PG rating that the MPAA gave the 2005 remake. For example, in the first "Yours, Mine, & Ours," the widower's three teenage sons concocted an alcoholic beverage for the Lucille Ball character that consisted of equal parts of gin, scotch, and vodka, and she gets deliriously drunk at dinner. Nowadays, movies that depict this kind of aberrant behavior garner an R-rating. Today's R-rated epics generate considerably less revenue than either PG-13 or PG films. In a politically correct climate that doesn't tolerate showing teens mixing up alcoholic drinks, Hollywood toes a tightrope. Meanwhile, the two "Yours, Mine, & Ours" movies differ fundamentally in other respects, too. Whereas the Ball/Fonda film rambled along at a leisurely 111 minutes, with a largely amiable but straightforward plot, the Russo/Quaid remake clocks in at 88 minutes with a far more farcical plot. Anybody who remembers the mild-mannered 1968 version should find the remake a vast improvement. Actually, the slapstick shenanigans in the remake resemble the typical tomfoolery that Lucille Ball specialized in on her landmark "I Love Lucy" (1951-1957) CBS sitcom.Far-fetched as this harmless hokum clearly is, "Yours, Mine, & Ours" owes its origins to Helen Beardsley's autobiographical bestseller "Who Gets the Drumsticks" published in 1964. In real-life, the widower and widow of two families consisting of 8 and 10 children respectively tied the knot and enjoyed special privileges at the U.S. Navy's commissary. Screen writing duo Ron Burch and David Kidd, who penned the Freddie Prinze, Jr. comedy "Head over Heels," have exaggerated the comedic elements and set apart both families by creating opposing lifestyles. The families in the previous "Yours, Mine, & Ours" appeared virtually identical compared with those in the remake. U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid of "The Alamo") runs a taut ship for his eight children of all ages. They've grown accustomed to the dysfunctional lifestyle of being transferred frequently from one military installation to another. When the Coast Guard relocates this middle-aged widower from San Diego to his hometown of New London, Connecticut, to serve as commandant of the Coast Guard Academy, he runs into his old flame, Helen North (Rene Russo of "Lethal Weapon 4"), a widow herself with ten offspring of all ages, at their 30th annual high school reunion aboard a cruise ship. Presto, Frank and Helen rekindle the chemistry that attracted them initially and make for the altar without inviting their kids in the wedding. The Beardsleys buy a dilapidated warehouse-sized domicile near the coast with a lighthouse and settle down to the humongous task of renovating it with every predictable but side-splitting pratfall known to slapstick comedy. Nevertheless, the love that Frank and Helen share doesn't compensate for the drastic differences in their child rearing practices. Frank's kids mind him, address him as "sir", and utter no complaints about the regimen that he has established for their daily chores and their morning bathroom logistics. However, Helen's free-spirited brood, four of whom form an adopted Rainbow Coalition of sorts in racial heritage, balk at Frank's rules and regulations. Basically, the children hate each other and fight among themselves, until they realize that the only way they can get back to normal is to break up their parents."Scooby Doo" director Raja Gosnell keeps things snappy, so that the story doesn't sink in its own sap. While the original plodded along for nearly 50 minutes before the principals exchanged vows, Quaid and Russo get married off-screen in the first 15 minutes. Gosnell never misses a chance to stage elaborate pranks with leading man Dennis Quaid. Quaid falls face down into a pool of paint during a madcap Home Depot shopping spree. The chief scene stealer is a personable pot-bellied pig that belongs to Helen's hippie-style kids. The pig takes a bath in the kitchen sink, dines at the breakfast table, and awakens the admiral with wet piggy kisses in the A.M. Sure, "Yours, Mine, & Ours" stoops a lot and qualifies as more predictable than surprising, but the sympathetic performances by Quaid and Russo keep this comedy afloat rather than scuttle it. Altogether , "Yours, Mine, & Ours" refuses to take itself as seriously as the original and ranks as far funnier than you may imagine for PG rated comedy.