Susan Granger’s review of “Yours, Mine & Ours” (Paramount Pictures)
With the success of “Cheaper By the Dozen” with its sequel coming out soon, the time was ripe for a remake of a 1968 comedy, starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, based on a true story about a couple who brought 18 children into their marriage and then had a baby together.
This time, free- spirited Helen North (Rene Russo) is a widow with 10 kids while highly-disciplined Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid), a widower, has eight. She’s a handbag designer and he’s a Coast Guard admiral, recently returned to his hometown of New London, Connecticut, where he re-discovered Helen, his high-school sweetheart. Impulsively, they marry and move into a seaside home, complete with its own lighthouse, pet dog and pet pig, plus a housekeeper (Linda Hunt). But, despite “The Brady Bunch” and organizational charts allotting bathroom-time, this disparate, blended brood can’t seem to get along. In fact, all they have in common, along with unhappiness, hyperactivity and attention deficit disorders, is an ardent desire for their newlywed parents to get a divorce so they can return to their previous existences.
Director Raja Gosnell (“Scooby-Doo”) has assembled a strong cast. Problem is: he just doesn’t know what to do with them. The blandly wholesome yet perfunctory script by Ron Burch and David Kidd doesn’t help, even though it’s been updated to have six of Helen’s kids adopted, a veritable rainbow coalition with Asians, Indians and African-Americans represented. There’s an inordinate amount of chaotic, silly slapstick, often based on regurgitated food. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Yours, Mine & Ours” is a frantic, familiar 5. It’s an 88-minute, family-friendly diversion that should have a longer life on the video shelf than in local theaters.
