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| Director
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Raja Gosnell
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| Starring
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Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo,
Jerry O'Connell |
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| The plot of
Yours Mine and Ours |
A widow (Russo) and widower (Quaid) fall in love
and marry, much to the dismay of their combined
18 children. |
Yours Mine
and Ours Movie Review
|
Review by Marjorie
Baumgarten:
If you can’t wait
one more month to see Cheaper by the Dozen 2, you can
go to the theatre this week and see this new supersized
family comedy, itself a remake of the 1968 Henry Fonda
and Lucille Ball comedy. It won’t spoil your appetite
or even leave much of an impression, as tame and uninspired
as it is. On the other hand, it won’t offend any
sensibilities or desecrate the memory of the original
– and will definitely make The Brady Bunch look
like an example of prudent family planning. Coast Guard
admiral and widower Frank Beardsley (Quaid) moves with
his eight children to a post in New London, Conn., as
the movie begins. Soon he runs into his old high school
flame Helen North (Russo), a widow who has 10 children
of her own. (In the movie’s gesture toward reproductive
responsibility – and perhaps as an explanation
of why Rene Russo seems to be in such great shape –
it is explained that six of her kids are adopted.) Quicker
than you can say "blended family," the two
marry and merge households. Predictably, the kids all
hate one another, and Frank's and Helen’s disparate
attitudes about discipline and organization create their
own mayhem. He runs his house like a ship, with duty
charts and bathroom schedules; she is a free spirit
who believes that the home should be a cosmos for free
expression. Why these two fell in love is something
of a mystery, but hey, that’s love for you. Quaid
endures more than his share of comic falls and scrapes,
while the kids all unite in various schemes to break
their parents apart. Director Gosnell, who directed
Big Momma’s House and both Scooby-Doo movies,
regrettably did better work in those films..more..
Review By Scott
Gwin:
It seems only appropriate
that Yours, Mine, and Ours is released on the Thanksgiving
weekend. While much of America is gathered around tables
in a mass effort to keep the turkey population in check,
Hollywood continues to revel in a feast of its own.
Theirs, however, is a gruesomely cannibalistic banquet
and Yours, Mine and Ours is the latest example. Frankly,
I’m getting rather tired of the movie industry
gorging on its old successes and tossing us the bones.In
all fairness, not all remakes are complete and utter
disasters. Sure the odds of one outshining the original
are slimmer than finding someone who thought Vin Diesel
was funnier than the duck in The Pacifier, but occasionally
it happens. However, if your desire is to have your
remake be guaranteed almost unwatchable there is a sure-fire
measure you can take: let Nickelodeon make it! Yours,
Mine and Ours has the feeling of a movie that could
been decent, perhaps even as good as the 1968 original,
but any potential has been covered over in a thick layer
of disgusting green slime and unmistakable Nickelodeon
orange paint.The story is a simple one. On one side
you have a widowed Coast Guard admiral (Dennis Quaid)
who doesn’t so much run a family as a mini-version
of the Naval Academy. He keeps a tight ship and his
eight, well-groomed, well-behaved children have that
Sound of Music look that leaves you expecting them to
beak into a round of Eidel Weiss at any second. On the
other end there’s the touchy-feely, hippie but
hip widow (Rene Russo) whose mostly adopted household
of ten children is more racially diverse than the cast
of Star Trek: Voyager. Her strategy of parenting involves
a careful balance of “do whatever you want”
and “think about what you did”, resulting
in one of the best arguments I’ve ever seen for
the existence of bad-parenting induced ADHD (sometimes
it’s cured with discipline, folks, not Ritalin)..More..
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