Yours, Mine & Ours Movie Review:

One of the most uninspired remakes in years, this Cheaper-by-the-Dozening of the 1968 comedy is astoundingly unfunny. The writers and director strain for laughs at every turn, and get nothing.

Single dad Frank Beardsley (Quaid) is a Coast Guard admiral who runs his home with military precision, whipping his eight kids into a fine-running machine as they move from base to base. After moving back to his hometown, Frank runs into his high school flame Helen North (Russo), a hippy-like single earth-mother with 10 kids (six of them adopted from varying ethnicities, natch). Sparks fly and soon the North-Beardsleys are setting up house. But these two very different groups of kids hate each other, and plot together to drive their parents apart.

Gosh, I wonder what's going to happen? Interspersed through one of the most painfully predictably plots in years (which is saying a lot) is a series of resolutely awful comedy set-pieces, all of which involve badly behaving children, yelling parents, a snorting pig, a "hilarious" hamster and usually Quaid plunging into something. We just watch slack-jawed that any filmmaker would dare put this kind of thing on screen; it's like the first rehearsal for the exact same cornball stunts Gosnell used in Home Alone 3 (1997).

Poor Quaid and Russo try bravely to make the most of it, but the lame script defeats them. They generate enough chemistry to make their relationship sweetly believable at the beginning, then look increasingly lost as the film descends into ludicrous, embarrassing farce. The kids are sharp and cute, especially the teens, and manage to make most of them register as human beings with distinct personalities, albeit lifted straight from other slapstick family movies.

The main problem is that there's not a single moment when this film even comes close to touching on real life. It's contrived and banal and never remotely humorous. Unless, that is, you begin to watch it as a spoof, because then the concluding sequences are absolutely hysterical. In a very bad way.

Rich Cline

 

During this time of year we are always force-fed some family holiday film that tries to teach us a valuable lesson. I am not talking about the “Santa Clause” or “The Grinch”. I am talking about sappy detrimental films like 2003’s “Cheaper by the Dozen” and others. You know those family “for the sake of family” films that are must viewing around the holidays even if they barely have a holiday theme.

“Yours, Mine and Ours” stars Dennis Quaid as Frank Beardsley, a navy admiral who is a single dad raising his eight kids. Chaos erupts when the Frank meets his old high school sweetheart, Helen (Rene Russo) and the sparks start to fly again. A whirlwind romance commences and the two get married. The only problem is that Helen has 10 kids of her own.

Cue the theme music:

“Here's the story of a lovely lady
Who was bringing up ten kids of her own.
All of them had free-spirited minds, like their mother,
The youngest one has a pig.

Here's the story, of a man named Beardsley,
Who was busy with eight kids of his own,
They were ten people, living all together,
Yet they were all alone.

Till the one day when the lady met this admiral
And they knew it was much more than a hunch,
That this brood would somehow form a family.
That's the way we all became the Beardsley Bunch.
The Beardsley Bunch,

That's the way we all became the Beardsley Bunch.
The Beardsley Bunch.”

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

“Yours, Mine & Ours” is your typical garden-variety family comedy. It is no more and no less. There are the screaming kids, the cute kids, the cheerleader sister and the leader oldest brother. They have even allowed for six of Helen’s kids to be mixed races and sexes. I guess you could say they made a “Brady UN”. Now only if they could all get along so we can get choked up by the ending.

Amongst the chaos are actually quite staggering performances from Quaid and Russo who deserve all the credit here. They are both fine actors but need better material. OK, Dennis and Rene you have done one for the kids back home, now let’s do one for your careers.

I can whole-heartedly say that “Yours, Mine & Ours” was very, very hard to sit through and definitely not my kind of movie. I just can’t get over how each of these pictures is basically the same as the one before. Talk about genres that never evolve.

With the “Cheaper by the Dozen” sequel opening next month, this film will probably be remembered as “Cheaper by the Dozen 3”.

So Says the Soothsayer



Dean Kish

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