Yours, Mine & Ours (2005)

the audience applauded

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I've never seen the original version of this movie but it seems like a decent-ish idea for a movie. A mother of ten and a father of eight get married and hijinks of course ensue within the over packed household. Nothing special but its an idea that would probably merit a watch if nothing was on television and you needed to distract your kids for a while, with the bonus of originally starring the legendary Lucielle Ball and Henry Fonda. So let's take that and replace it Rene Russo (best known for generic action movies and a bit part in Thor) and Dennis Quaid (the guy who you're always surprised is related to an Academy Award winning actor like Randy Quaid) and hire all the most prominent tweenybopper actors that no one will remember in ten years (thank you, Nickelodeon Studios). Bing bang boom, its Yours, Mine, and Ours. It's hard to describe and even imagine how such a generic and seemingly simple to handle story could devolve into such a morally bankrupt movie. A lot of this is attributed to the characters. Pretty much all of them, from kid A to kid R, are just the kind of kids who even the most forgiving of parents would consider bringing back the belt. The kids that the story actually focuses around are Phoebe, Christina, Dylan, and William, who are actively plotting to split their parents up because...they don't like each other? Great motive, kids, split up a pair of people who love each other because you don't like their kids. This later gets dropped in favor of that now they hate Quaid's parenting (even...Quaid's kids...what?) and focus all their efforts around sabotaging Quaid specifically. These kids get very little development because frankly the movie seems to want to do every single high school cliché with them--Will is trying to get elected for class president but he's not doing it COOOOL enough, Phoebe's boyfriend is trying to hit on Christina out of nowhere, and Dylan is just lurking around the background being a sub-par Drake Bell character. The rest of the kids have the grand honor of being there for nothing more than unfunny slapstick that might as well have a guy going "Wah Wah Waaaaahhhhhaahahah' in the background. While these kids are annoying, I'll give them credit that they're nothing on the batshit insane performance that Russo and Quaid turned in. The movie is trying very hard to push the advocacy of less firm parenting and less discipline by making Quaid look like some comical bad guy in his hardass military style parenting. The problem is, if any group of kids needed their asses smacked into 'ship shape', its Russo's kids. They basically ruin the house with some sort of paint explosion (which Russo's character bends over backwards to blame Quaid for, even claiming he BRAINWASHED them to organize her work room) and then throw a raging kegger when the two go out to a ceremony. Again, Russo seems well and good to forgive this despite the obvious underage drinking, BMX biking down her stairs, and someone ordering over 300 dollars worth of pizza that she's probably going to end up billed for.All of this is in the spirit of 'breaking them up' but Russo will have no such thing as discipline for the fact that her kids just tore her house apart and ordered what looked to be three kegs of alcohol. Even when her kids ADMIT that they were actively trying to split her and her husband up, the best she can manage is a dull whisper of shock (with of course no punishment for the kids). In the face of these kids' actions, Quaid's hardcore parenting style seems far more reasonable than Russo's hippy dippy approach. When he threatens to send everyone in the party to military school I was quietly hoping that all of Russo and Quaid's awful kids would go with them--they sure could use it with the way they behave. And I don't even like military school as a behavioral correction method. By the end of the movie I wasn't hoping for this family to stay together. I was hoping for Quaid to pick up his kids, get the hell out, and leave Russo's family to destroy itself with its sheer idiocy. Either that or take up that hammer threat. This is poorly directed movie blind to what its saying, trying to cover that fact up with a bizarre politically correct recasting and a sappy ending that felt like every character was forced to play into. I wouldn't watch it again and I wouldn't really be keen on letting kids watch it either. Bad acting, bad messages, and just an overall bad feel. Stay away from this movie.

I found this film funny and a good time. There were a couple points that I thought weren't really suited to this leading man (Quaid), but other than that, the acting was great.I could feel chemistry between 'Mom & Dad' and also the tension between them. The kids also did a great job making the tension real as well as the affection they later have for each other (which we all knew was going to happen, but I'm not bothered by this sort of predictability as most films have many predictable moments and the ones that strive too hard to avoid it usually end up unsatisfying).Although I can't imagine a situation like theirs ever being successful in real life (two large, but vastly different families coming together), this film does very well in making you forget that just for a while.It's a clean film suitable for anybody. The charm, the characters, the story, the chemistry, the hijinks; all worthwhile reasons to watch this one.

I thought this movie was great, and I'm expecting as sequel soon.Each actor (Dennis Quade, Rene Russo etc.) played fabulously for their roles. I was deeply impressed with Danielle Panabaker and Katiija Pevec, who played the roles of Phoebe North and Christina Beardsley. But, I must say, I was impressed with ALL the actors. The movie showed me comedy, romance, but most of all, teamwork. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. Teamwork. At the beginning of the movie, your going to wonder what the heck I'm talking about. But then, throughout the last half, your going to notice how the two sides of the family put their differences together, hilariously trying to rip their parents relationship into shreds.Like I said, this movie was great, and I'm sure that if you watch it you'll agree with me.

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.