After the box office success of Cheaper by the Dozen last year, it must have seemed like a good idea to some Paramount executive to green light a remake of the 1968 family classic Yours, Mine, and Ours.
Clearly, the Steve Martin/Bonnie Hunt hit proved that what Americans want to see on the silver screen are families just like their own… only much, much bigger. So perhaps in a kind of offspring arms race, Paramount’s Yours, Mine, and Ours has countered Fox’s Cheaper with an extra six kids. The result is about as chaotic as any endeavor involving 18 children might be.
The film opens on Coast Guard Admiral Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid) reconnecting with his high school sweetheart, the free-spirited handbag designer Helen North (Renee Russo) at their high school reunion. A short spin around the dance floor reveals that the pair have a lot more in common than simply their alma mater. It turns out the last 30 years have left both widowed and with a passel of kids to raise alone. Frank has eight (produced via the old-fashioned method) and Helen, in a slightly updated twist, has 10, about half of which are adopted.
Another equally quick turn under the disco ball rekindles the former flame and leaves the two head-over- heels in love. And so, without so much as introducing one another to their broods, Frank and Helen elope. But though the two become one, their parenting styles prove to be about as far apart as the East is from the West. With Frank’s rigid military approach to discipline and Helen’s bohemian anything-goes avoidance of it, they have their kids running in circles (literally, unfortunately). Unable to bear their newly expanded family, the youngsters take it upon themselves to break up their parents’ hasty union.