This is another Hollywood
remake of a film about a Connecticut couple with a bunch of kids. Dennis Quaid
and Rene Russo are the couple. They’re ex-flames, both widowed, who meet again
and decide to marry about five minutes later. She’s a hippie chick, he’s a
no-nonsense Coast Guard admiral who treats his eight kids like cadets.
Understandably, this annoys her ten kids; it annoyed me about two minutes into
the movie. Did the couple’s differing temperaments break them up before? Why
are they sure it will work now? Why are they so easily manipulated by their
children? Who knows? Such crumbs of character development would have cost the
filmmakers precious screen time that could be devoted to shrieking and pratfalls.
And, oh yes, there are hijinks, too. Paint sand, and other substances fall on
Quaid’s head because, I guess, kids will find it funny.
The kids hate the new
arrangement, but predictably start to like each other because, apparently, the
script calls for them to do so. It’s to Russo and Quaid’s credit that I didn’t
hate their characters by the end of the movie. (I also expect to see Danielle
Panabaker, who plays Russo’s eldest daughter, in some better roles.) Having
seen the similar Cheaper by the Dozen remake (whose sequel is due the
21st), I began to wonder if it were possible to make a decent movie about a big
family. So I watched the original version and found that it was. The 1968 Yours,
Mine and Ours is a very different film, more adult-oriented, but depicting
an actual courtship and believably based on real people with real issues
you might imagine there’d be in blending two families into one. I got the
feeling that this “update” was based on an MGM board meeting, or a focus group
of nine-year olds. (By making some of Russo’s kids adopted, we get the
Hollywood version of ethnic diversity: one black kid in the film talking
differently than the rest of the kids, being a natural rapper, and dressing
like a pimp for the big party scene.)
reviewed 12/1/2005
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