Yours, Mine, and Ours

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As remakes go, Yours, Mine, and Ours is pretty unnecessary. The original 1968 version starred Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball. The remake has Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo, and eighteen bright looking kids out for contrived family fun. Two high school sweethearts, Frank Beardsley (Quaid, Flight of the Phoenix, In Good Company) and Helen North (Russo, Two for the Money, Big Trouble) reconnect after years apart. Beardsley is a type A personality. He runs the Naval Academy, and his wife died, leaving him in charge of the eight kids. North is the opposite. Her husband died, leaving her with four children and six adopted kids (a veritable United Nations). She is a free spirit, who believes in art, and touchy-feely things. In other words, they are exact opposites and will fall madly in love with each other.

The problem with Yours, Mine, and Ours is that director Raja Gosnell (Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, Scooby-Doo) is that everything feels a bit too fake. This is the type of movie engineered by committee for broad family appeal. There's slapstick comedy, a good moral, and really not much that is objectionable. Well, except for the basic plot point - kids teaming up to break up their parents. Sure, it's blatantly obvious that they will learn from their mistakes, but sheesh, this is pretty bad. Screenwriters Ron Burch and David Kidd (Head Over Heels) are counting on things like food fights and progressively worse bickering to generate laughs. Heck, there's even a pig thrown in for good measure.

Once the Beardsley's and the Norths move in together, all hell breaks look. Frank runs his family like the military. They march, they follow orders, and they do everything except act like real kids. Helen's family is pure chaos. Of course, once Frank assigns rooms, each has a Beardsley and North, causing mass hijinks. Nobody gets along, and Frank and Helen have opposite ways in which they want to discipline their new family. William (Sean Faris, Sleepover, Pearl Harbor), the oldest, realizes that the only way to get things back to normal is to break up their parents. This means getting Frank and Helen to fight.

It's not a real stretch to see where things go from here. Frank and Helen bicker, and the children begin to bond. By the time Frank and Helen are ready to truly split, the kids realize they enjoy each other's company. Again, purely artificial. The real wonder is that Gosnell actually manages to squeeze some emotion into the end of the story. Probably because he was willing to sink the story so low that it was nice to see good things happen to the children. But Yours, Mine, and Ours still maintains a large sense of artificiality. Frank and Helen marry after seeing each other again twice. Yes, they had some relationship in high school, but by not explaining what happened and then having the two jump into a marriage, Gosnell makes them seem pretty stupid.

Kaye rates it: Not that good[endtext]

A Lot Like Love

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Well, give them credit for trying something different. A Lot Like Love is a romantic comedy that tries to be a bit more serious. The film spans seven years, and recounts the slow realization of Emily Friehl (Amanda Peet, Melinda and Melinda, The Whole Ten Yards) and Oliver Martin (Ashton Kutcher, Guess Who, The Butterfly Effect) that they are perfect for each other. Standing in the way of a romance are boyfriends, girlfriends, fiances, fiancees, and whole states. The first time they met was on a plane from New York, where Emily introduced Oliver to the mile high club. They had a wonderful time together wandering New York, and went their separate ways.

Three years later, Emily, freshly dumped, calls Oliver, and the two meet again. The problem is that Oliver is about to move to San Francisco. It's the late nineties, the internet is booming, and Oliver wants to open his own business. The same thing happens a few more times, each time with an additional obstacle, and plenty of manufactured romantic moments (Kutcher playing a guitar in an apartment complex, or kissing Emily just in time for the new year). Because of the way the film is structured, director Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls, Saving Grace) gives a Cliff's Notes version of a typical movie relationship. It never feels like Emily and Oliver know each other too well. In fact, some of the times they meet are merely to get over a bad breakup rather than see the other person.

The unique element in A Lot Like Love is how screenwriter Colin Patrick Lynch has the two principals mature over the course of the film. The people they are at the end really seem older and more grounded than the people they were at the beginning, and it's more than just different hair and clothes. Oliver begins as a dorky, cocky college grad, and eventually mellows and becomes a bit more GQ. Also, because of his business ups and downs, Oliver is a lot more grounded. At the beginning of A Lot Like Love, Emily is more of a free spirit. Over the years, she gets a job, and achieves a much stabler lifestyle.

Complementing the character changes are the performances from Peet and Kutcher. Peet is the more interesting one - she seems to be making a concerted effort to take more challenging roles. Although the role of Emily isn't exactly "challenging," Peet invests a good deal of effort into it, making Emily's emotional growth credible. Kutcher does well by picking another role suited to his strengths, being the typical normal guy-next-door. He falters when the story calls for Oliver to show some real emotion. The real problem comes from the way that Cole and Lynch try to keep them apart artificially. They want to show how two people destined for each other will eventually find a way to come together. It's a very sweet idea, but all of the obstacles cause it to feel like an extended soap opera.

Kaye rates it: Not bad[endtext]