That Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo would choose to enter into the same arrangement some 30-odd years later baffles the mind, although perhaps the litany of successful crowded-family movies I've just mentioned might explain their motives. After all, audiences can't seem to get enough of watching two adults suffering under the strain of too many kids.

As Henry Fonda says in the original, it's enough to "make any father review his position on the entire question of birth control." This first film was a movie for grown-ups with no qualms about being fresh, and yet it still offered plenty for kids to relate to and enjoy. Once the couple were married, they wasted no time making another little addition of their own.

Frank Beardsley (Quaid) is still a military man, although he's got a much better handle on his eight kids this time around. Frank keeps his kids in lockstep and goes on about how everything should be "shipshape." Meanwhile, Helen North (Russo) is more frazzled than ever. She sees home as a place for free expression, not good impressions.

The romance -- which formed the backbone of the original -- is handled with kid gloves here, as if too much adult content would tip kids' gross-out threshold. Needless to say, no one dares mention the subject of s-e-x (although Frank and Helen clearly have a fair amount of practice). The remake is strictly a children's movie, and the buggers have the run of the place, leaving almost no room to examine the logistics that make the whole thing interesting.

How do Frank and Helen feed so many kids? Where do they get the money to dress them all? And what unexpected surprises would this kind of arrangement really bring? (For an answer to some of these questions, I refer you to the outstanding 2003 documentary My Flesh and Blood, in which one extraordinary foster mother struggles to raise her 11 special needs children.)

Whereas the Fonda-Ball film is filled with sparks of astounding insight into the everyday challenges of raising children, the remake seems to have been written and directed by people whose only experience with children is the long-distant memory of having been kids themselves so many years ago.

Sure, it's cute to watch the "creative" North children's personal style clash with the more regimented Beardsley clan and even more entertaining to see paint-slinging, water-spraying fights break out between them. But the end result plays like little more than an extended episode of Nickelodeon's Double Dare, with Quaid getting slimed from all sides.

Screenwriters Ron Burch and David Kidd have introduced a new stitch into the story, with both sets of kids realizing that the only way to stop the merger is by driving their parents to divorce. Here I'm reminded of The Parent Trap in reverse, and though I think an interesting movie might be made along those lines, I fear Yours, Mine and Ours is a misappropriation of 18 kids (and one potbellied pig) when just one disgruntled child on either side would do the trick.

[as featured in The Miami Herald]