This being the remake of the 1968 Henry Fonda-Lucille Ball film, this time starring Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo, two likeable stars. Quaid is a widower with eight children. Russo is a widow with ten children. They were high school sweethearts and Quaid has moved back to their hometown to become head of the Coast Guard Academy. Yes, Quaid is military and by-the-book, while Russo is a disorganized wild child. Will they ever fall in love? They do, and quickly. They decide to become a family, but the kids have other ideas and band together to sabotage the relationship. I gather from a close analysis of the IMDB plot synopsis that this differs from the original, where the kids just had trouble getting together.
I'm betting that, unlike this modern one, the original is not just a mashup of as many slapstick jokes as can be fit into eighty-seven minutes, with Quaid ending up with his face in goo multiple times and kids either having a paint fight or hanging out of a window every other scene. Quaid and Russo are not easily hateable, but the kids are so annoying and the realization the kids come to towards the end is so lazy that they completely overshadow the passable leads. Sort of like, say, if it were Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt?
Yours, Mine & Ours may be nominally a remake of a 1968 movie, but I didn't like it the first time when it was called Cheaper By The Dozen.
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