Thanksgiving Leftovers: Yours, Mine, & Ours

Yours, Mine, & Ours (Director: Raja Gosnell)





















Former editor Gosnell's directing resume reads literally like a hit list of bad films (or, bad films that were hits, to explain what I mean). The first was the thankless job of directing Home Alone 3, a 1997 sequel far past the early-90's Home Alone craze. Then came the romantic undercover high school comedy Never Been Kissed. His first huge hit was Big Momma's House, which was just terrible. And among the all-time worst of this decade on my list are Scooby-Doo and its sequel, but they were cash machines. This is a remake of 1968's adaptation of Helen Eileen Beardsley's book, and this updating comes courtesy of partners Ron Burch and David Kidd.

OK, so like Cheaper By the Dozen, itself an old movie based on a true book and recently remade (and set to have a sequel this December), we have yet another tons-of-kids premise, and yet another that pre-dates the popular Bradys. Of course it sucks. It reeks of a tired premise and too-easy gags. But it could have been pretty good if anyone wanted to take a chance. Much like this year's unbelievably-a-hit The Pacifier, if someone had some balls, we would have something really enjoyable.

Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid) is a widowed father with 8 kids. Helen North (Rene Russo) is a widowed mother with 10 kids (4 her own, 6 adopted). The two were old high school sweethearts, and they seemed destined to get married at one point, but it didn't happen. They meet again at a 30-year high school reunion (I guess they missed the 10 and 20), and in one night get married without telling the kids until afterwards. The North children are free-spirit artists and the Beardsleys, run by a Naval Admiral father, are rules-oriented. It's Democrats versus Republicans, it's yin and yang, it's...you know, all that crap. The kids, of course, hate their new brothers and sisters, eventually unite to try to break the newlyweds up, and in the process start growing accustomed to their faces.

The whole movie is set up to have farcical situations where people get messy, or hurt themselves, or both, because the kids can't get along. I don't have a problem with the premise--but I think when you go overboard ridiculous with 18 kids, 2 parents, a housekeeper, a cat, a dog, and a pig, I think you should really go overboard ridiculous. Like close to Naked Gun ridiculous. I thought of some pretty good off-kilter gags they could have used, and in some places in the writing, you can swear that there was a slight hope of going into slightly darker territory. I know, this is supposed to be a Thanksgiving family movie. But my gags wouldn't have changed the rating, it just would have been funnier is all. We've seen all these situations before, so why not add a tad bit of spice?

I will say this, though. Danielle Panabaker is a cutie (she's immediately to the right of Dennis Quaid on the poster). She was in this summer's Sky High, and now she's 18. So it's all good.