Yours, Mine and Ours (1968) originally starred Lucille
Ball and Henry Fonda — both at least 15 years too old for the
parts of a widow and widower who marry and amalgamate their already
large families into a supersized one. In the end the
then-57-year-old Miss Ball is supposed to be giving birth to the
couple’s 19th child while the 63-year-old Mr. Fonda gives what is
meant to be an inspiring pep talk to one of his teenage
step-daughters on the beauties of sexual continence and married
love — “It isn’t going to bed with a man that proves you’re in
love with him,” he tells her, “it’s getting up in the morning and
facing the drab, miserable, wonderful everyday world with him that
counts” — after the girl has asked him whether or not it would be
right to yield to her boyfriend’s importunities and sleep with him.
Hey, it could happen!
At the time, that moral environment already looked a world away
from 1964 when the memoir by Helen North Beardsley on which the
film was based was published. From the point of view of 2005, it
looks even more alien. But Hollywood can always find a way to stamp
such ancient properties with the authentic vulgarity of our own
time, and the remake, directed by Raja Gosnell and starring the
slightly more age-appropriate Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo, takes
out the moralism of the original, leaving nothing but an odd-couple
yarn for the pre-teens, for whom the repetitive slapstick routines,
mostly at Mr. Quaid’s expense, are obviously intended.
In 1968, of course, grown-ups still went to the movies in
sufficient numbers to induce film-makers to make movies about adult
problems, even if they made them badly. Now that the market has
become so kid-centered, so have the movies. Like the re-make of
Cheaper by the Dozen a couple of years ago — of which,
God help us, there is to be a sequel next week — this one takes a
heart-warming affirmation of family values and turns it into a
lesson to the parental authority figures to put their own lives
second and give their spoiled brood even more of what they want.
Just like Steve Martin in Cheaper, dad has to give up his
dream job because the kids don’t think he’s paying enough attention
to them.
Also, dad’s dream job is Commandant of the Coast Guard. That
makes another interesting contrast with 1968, when Mr. Fonda’s
character was only a humble warrant officer in the Navy but never
considered — or would have been able to consider — giving it up.
It’s another measure of the extent to which Hollywood these days is
making more and more movies about eminent personages, often
celebrities and rich people, rather than ordinary folks. The
amalgamated Beardsley clan may be over-populated, but there isn’t
so much as a hint of poverty or hardship, as everybody fits nicely
into a converted lighthouse in a picturesque setting on the coast
of Long Island Sound and all learn teamwork (or don’t learn it,
actually) by sailing daddy’s yacht — appropriately named My
Way. As long as you’re pandering to kiddies’ fantasies, you
might as well do the job right.
In 1968 the mostly negligible plot centered around Mr. Fonda’s
attempt to adopt his new wife’s children as his own, something that
also looks more than a little strange by our standards, especially
when one of the littler children is supposed to be desperate to
take his new father’s name. In 2005, the story concerns a
conspiracy among the children of both families, who don’t like each
other, to break up their parents’ marriage. Charming, don’t you
think? The reasons why they don’t like each other are also
instructive. Mr. Quaid is, as we might expect of a Coast Guard
admiral, a red-state sort of guy who likes to run a tight ship.
Miss Russo, by contrast, is an arty, hippyish, blue-state type with
a rainbow coalition of adoptees and her own kids, all of whom are
allowed to run wild. They call their new step-siblings “evil
preppies.”
“You sound like a big military robot, Frank,” says Helen in one
of the fights provoked by the children.
“Yeah?” replies Frank. “Well you sound like a big
free-to-be-you-and-me flake!”
You’ll scarcely credit it, but Frank even believes in spanking.
Just a little bit, you understand, but his shame is palpable when
the kids reveal the fact to his disapproving wife. (Miss Ball’s
first appearance in the role of parent in 1968, by the way, is as
she is spanking one of her children.) Helen’s motto, you might not
be surprised to learn, is “Spanking is never the answer,” and it
carries the day. You can hardly suppose that Frank and Helen didn’t
talk about being at opposite ends of the cultural divide before
they married, but their only discovering it afterwards gives Mr.
Gosnell the opportunity to show the conservative capitulating to
the child-centered views of his wife — and of the film-makers, who
thus complement the kiddie-fantasy with one of their own: namely,
that of the whole country united under the rule of parental and
cultural laissez-faire. If that vision appeals to you, then you
might like this movie. But then, if that vision appeals to you, you
are probably either a child or a Hollywood film-maker.
