Sometimes you see these remakes and you just can’t imagine what was going through someone’s mind. You remake a flawed movie with an interesting idea in order to improve it. You remake a hit to hopefully tap into some of that success. You remake a cult movie to bring it to a wider audience. But why the hell do you remake Yours, Mine, Ours (1968)?
Yes, at the time it was a big hit, grossing over $17 million (according to the Inflation Calculator, that would be $94,060,631.34 today). And the concept of two widowers who marry and raise 20 kids is sort of interesting, depending on what you do with it (even though it is based on a true story). But I can’t imagine that the new version is going to have any light to shed on this subject. Oh, but there are adopted kids this time, which adds a tiny morsel of ethnicity to the proceedings, and isn’t that so contemporary?
You read a review like this and it makes you want to say — okay, it makes me want to say, “Did you see the original? It’s not that special.” Honestly, who gives a crap?
There’s a scene in the original where the kids get Lucille Ball stinkin’ drunk and I think it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s so cruel a trick that’s it not really funny at all. A lot of the movie is like that.
There was Cheaper by the Dozen (a favorite book of mine when I was a lad), the story of motion study experts Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and their 12 children. It was turned into the decent film Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and then into the execrable Cheaper by the Dozen (2003). The story of the Gilbreths is pretty interesting, and I’d love to see it done right some day (gros chance), but the remake only seemed fascinated by the large number of children. The plot consisted of people acting like assholes and then making up at the end. Sounds like the new Yours, Mine, Ours has the same story. Creativity continues to reign in Tinseltown!