
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.