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Dennis Quaid and Rene Russo follow wearily in the footsteps of Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball in this asinine remake of 1968 comedy Yours, Mine & Ours. They play old college sweethearts, both widowed, who reunite and become referees in a match of hissing and spitting between their combined 18 children. It's like a dragged out edition of Crackerjack! where Quaid gets slime-dunked at every opportunity. But at least The Krankies were above slopping out bucketfuls of sentimental syrup...

With Â鶹ԼÅÄ Alone 3 and Scooby-Doo to his name, director Raja Gosnell has carved a niche in dull slapstick capers. Unfortunately for him, badly staged pratfalls and lots of jumping up and down and screaming don't distract from the absence of an actual plot. He hurries through the courtship and marriage of Frank and Helen (Quaid and Russo), boiling them down to simple stereotypes for added convenience. Because Quaid is an uptight military man and Russo a fancy-free bohemian, they inevitably clash. However, that's not enough to inspire any real sense of jeopardy when the kids threaten to break them up.

"A CHEESY GROUP RAP"

The children have no discernible personalities. Instead they're reduced to watered-down clones of their respective parents and implanted in clichéd scenarios where they're forced learn the value of 'tolerance and togetherness', all of which builds to a cheesy group rap that would make even the hucksters at Coca Cola grit their teeth. No doubt Quaid and Russo will quickly want to forget Yours, Mine & Ours while the rest of us are wishing they'd kept it to themselves.