Yours, Mine & Ours

(2005) * Pg
90 min. Paramount Pictures. Director: Raja Gosnell. Cast: Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo, Linda Hunt, Rip Torn, Jerry O'Connell.
With the odious Yours, Mine & Ours, Scooby-Doo director Raja Gosnell remakes a 1968 Henry Fonda-Lucille Ball vehicle but forgets the charm. When Dennis Quaid and his brood of eight merge with Rene Russo's gang of ten, it's only a matter of time before Quaid is covered in green goo, but even I was surprised to find him covered in yellow goo not ten minutes later. Quaid is sort of funny as a fusty admiral, and Russo is likeable as a hippie artist, but their characters are so exaggerated as to be unrecognizable as human beings. The kids are likewise self-consciously stereotyped to make at least a few stand out from the pack—one tyke is a metrosexual designer, for example. In pursuit of reassuring comfortability for uptight red-state parents, Gosnell designs every plot move and calculated quirk to be easily predictable. We get the archetypal chaotic breakfast scene, a threat to the family's solvency, Rip Torn, a pig, Linda Hunt, and the inevitable happy ending, but it all plays like a giant warning to get out of town before Cheaper by the Dozen 2 opens.
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