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'Yours, Mine & Ours': His plus hers doesn't add up to very much

By PHIL KLOER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

When all else fails, and it usually does, cut to the pig.

That seems to be the guiding philosophy of the rather dreary family comedy "Yours, Mine & Ours," in which two families, totaling 18 kids and several pets, including a pig, get blended.

Paramount Pictures

'Yours, Mine & Ours'

The verdict: Oink.

Director: Raja Gosnell
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo, Rip Torn, Linda Hunt
Run time: 88 minutes
Release date: November 23, 2005
Rating: PG for some mild crude humor.
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The pig swallows a cellphone. The pig gets covered in paint. The pig burps. To 8-year-olds, this is going to be some pretty fine knee-slapping stuff. Everyone else in the family will be checking their watches, smiling a secret smile that at least "YM&O" clocks in at less than 90 minutes. Or maybe wishing that they'd gone to "Zathura," which is a better family flick by several light-years.

Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo add an embarrassing item to their respective Imdb.com listings, and maybe a nice summer home with the paycheck. He's a buttoned-down control freak admiral in the Coast Guard; she's a free-spirited flake of a fashion designer. He's a widower with eight kids living a highly regimented life; she's a widow with 10 kids living a free-wheeling life. When they meet, marry and move the families in together — all together now! — hilarity ensues. If we define hilarity as a pig doing something unexpected five or six times.

Technically, "YM&O" is a remake of a 1968 movie of the same title and premise starring Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball. But that's neither here nor there. What matters is how stale and charmless this movie feels, how hard the actors all work in the service of mediocrity, and how shameless Hollywood is for feeding us thin porridge like this and then wondering why box office is down.