Yours, Mine, & Ours - PG
Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that the movie includes crude humor, lots of drinking, and some questionable humor around homosexual stereotypes. There's a scene where beer kegs arrive at a teen party, adults drink liquor on dates and the housekeeper pours herself a martini when she's supposed to be babysitting. Kids engineer elaborate situations to break up their parents' marriage, creating domestic chaos (food, paint, toys, furniture, and pets -- here including a pig -- all in an uproar). Parents kiss and embrace; an adolescent girl kisses a boy at school, discovered by her new, and newly jealous, stepsister. One kid vomits while seasick on a boat. Language is mild, but includes homophobic jokes.
Families can use the movie as a jumping off point to talk about real blended families and what they think the true challenges are.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
A remake of the 1968 Lucille Ball-Henry Fonda vehicle, YOURS, MINE & OURS is less a movie than a series of kids-in-an-uproar scenes. Unfortunately, most of these scenes are neither comic nor clever.
The trouble begins when Coast Guard Admiral Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid) re-meets his beautiful high school sweetheart, Helen North (Rene Russo). Both have lost their spouses and have large numbers of kids (he has eight, she has ten, six of whom are adopted). They marry without telling their kids of ahead of time, apparently only to set up for the children's unhappiness at their abruptly changed living conditions.
Helen's children are artistically inclined and free-spirited (the conduct family discussions using a "talking stick"); Frank's are regimented, used to following orders and running a "tight ship." (His kids come with a nanny, played by the wonderful Linda Hunt, here reduced to inglorious reaction shots.) Frictions between the kids first cause arguments (including competition between the two teen girls -- pert, rules-bound Katija Pevec and more flexible Danielle Panabaker -- over the cute boy at school). Eventually, the children decide to break up their parents' marriage. To this end, they stage events --including two boys dressing up as girls and a discussion of two girls kissing -- that will cause arguments over parenting choices.
This rudimentary set-up never pays off, as the characters remain one-dimensional and the emotional stakes only vaguely sketched. Given the traumas that lie behind the kids' resistance to change (they've all lost parents, they're seeking stability, they feel betrayed by the parents they still have), the film's treatment of their struggles seems careless. Yes, it's a comedy, but it's not very funny.
When Frank and Helen actually fall prey to the kids' machinations and are on the verge of splitting, he's offered a promotion by his Commandant (Rip Torn), which means he and his kids can move away to Washington, DC and leave the Norths in Connecticut. At this point the plot falls apart completely, as the kids reverse course and must engineer, at the last minute, their parent's reconciliation. It's predictable but also nonsensical.
Families who like this movie might also enjoy the 1968 original Yours, Mine & Ours, The Brady Bunch Movie, Daddy Day Care, or the movie it most closely resembles, Cheaper by the Dozen (2003 or better, 1950).
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentRomantic/soon married couple kisses, briefly embraces in bed (cut to bed filled with sleeping children). |
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ViolenceAntic, comedic violence, as kids, parents, and pets crash, fall, and, on occasion, fight. |
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LanguageOne use of "." |
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Social BehaviorNoisy efforts by children to break up their newly married parents |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSome drinking by adults at dinner/on dates; one scene of kids (underage) drinking. |
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