L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, November 24, 2005 6:00 pm
From the lifeless, pointless remake department comes “Yours, Mine & Ours.” The 1968 original starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball wasn’t all that good. But this 2005 version of the story of the widower and widow who impulsively marry and then try to bring their 18 kids together as a family is awful, a boring, never funny pander to the family market.
This time the stars are Dennis Quaid, who plays Coast Guard Admiral Frank Beardsley, a man who runs his family of eight kids with military efficiency, and Rene Russo, who plays Helen North, a free-spirited artist with 10 kids who seemingly run wild, doing whatever they please.
Frank and Helen were high school sweethearts, but he left for a military career. Transferred back home to run the Coast Guard Academy, Frank bumps into Helen while on a horrid blind date. They hook up at a high school reunion and, within days, they’re married.
That doesn’t go over well with their considerable broods. The Beardsley kids think the Norths are frivolous flakes, and the Norths think the Beardsleys are automatons, marching like good soldiers.
But the kids have one thing in common: They want to break up the marriage. So the oldest kids, led by William Beardsley (Sean Farris) and Phoebe North (Danielle Panabaker) come up with myriad diabolical plans designed to drive a wedge between their parents.
It’s hard not to know exactly where the film is going and even harder to care, knowing that there’s going to be the requisite group hug and dancing at the end of the picture. In fact, that’s another tipoff to a bad movie — any picture that ends with the entire cast dancing is not that great.
If you’ve seen the trailers, you know that “Yours, Mine & Ours” is supposed to be a comedy and many of its laughs are supposed to come from its slapstick/pratfall humor. Unless you’re the Three Stooges or Mel Gibson in the “Lethal Weapon” movies, that kind of humor works about twice in a picture. Here it’s overkill for the sake of overkill.
The other hook is the antics of the cute kids. Admittedly, each family has an entertaining little one — the tiniest, most military Beardsley, Ethan (Ty Panitz), is a hoot, and young fashion designer Lou North (Andrew Vo) is equally charming.
But that can’t save the movie. And great character actors Rip Torn and Linda Hunt are wasted in their roles as the Coast Guard Commandant and the family’s housekeeper.
With its PG rating and “we can all get along” message, it would be nice to be able to recommend “Yours, Mine & Ours.” But the picture is bland, laughless and horribly dull.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.