Movie Review: Yours, Mine, Ours.

You see, Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid), an admiral in the Coast Guard and a widower, runs a tight ship. His eight children, ranging in age from 4-ish to 17-ish, exhibit personalities much like his, the ones in high school being cheerleaders and student body presidents. Everyone gets good grades. The youngest kids call their father "admiral." There is not a rebel in the bunch.

Having just relocated the family to his hometown of New London, Conn., Frank runs into his high school sweetheart Helen North (Rene Russo), a daft designer of handbags who is also recently widowed. She has 10 kids (four "hers" and six adopted), and their house is a chaotic melting pot. Like the Beardsleys, the Norths have taken on their parent's personality as their own -- musicians, artists, poets, and so forth. They're the kind of people who spray-paint a rosebush and call it art.

They are soon married and the two clans move into an old lighthouse, the only building in New London that can hold them all (short of a hotel, I guess). While the parents are in post-honeymoon bliss, oblivious to the powder keg they've created, the two groups of children hate each other. ("Mom gets married, we get drafted," says one of the North children of the Admiral's strict way of governing his affairs.)

But there is a brief truce in the war of preppies vs. hippies, long enough for the factions to join forces. In a sort of reverse "Parent Trap," the children plot to break their parents up so that the families can go back to their separate lives. Frank and Helen have thus far let their love blind them to their differences. The kids' plan is to force them to notice how opposite they are.

It was really interesting as you see the children bonding with one another as they go about with the plan of creating conflicts and messes...I especially loved the way the BLUE and RED spate battle out. It was really interesting and fun to see the contrast between the 2.

Films that promote a traditional two-parent, multi-kid family as sweetly and proudly as this one does are rare enough that, if you espouse those values yourself, it's worth seeing the movie just to support the idea of it, even if it's not exactly a brilliant piece of work. Well, here's a movie that embraces that segment of society -- the old-fashioned, no-sex-before-marriage, let's-raise-a-big-family types -- without mocking them or even suggesting any alternatives.

For myself, I'm interested in movies that are good, regardless of whether I agree with their social views. But if that kind of thing matters to you, and if you view your movie-going choices as a way of making a statement, then here's one of those films you've been asking for: clean and pro-family.