The movie was terribly rewritten. The original movie starring Lucille Ball was based on the story Helen Beardsley wrote after being widowed and then marrying a man with 10 children. This movie has a father who seemingly has control and flighty ditsy woman who has no control over her children or her life and can only handle life when it is in chaos. It would have been better had they just remade the Lucille Ball version of the movie without feeling the need to rewrite 90% of the scrit.

Coast Guard Rear Admiral Frank Beardsley (Dennis Quaid) returns to his hometown of New London to run the Coast Guard Academy. He's a widower and runs a tight ship with his 8 kids. While on a date, he runs into his childhood sweetheart artist Helen White-North (Rene Russo) who has 10 children and on a date of her own. She's also a widower and adopted 6 of her kids. They reconnect, quickly marries and move into the big lighthouse from their past. Frank brings along his housekeeper Mrs. Munion (Linda Hunt). The kids don't get along and decide to join forces to split up the couple.There are just so many kids. There are so many of them that most remain nameless unknown figures to me. The two oldest girls have a good side story but that's rare. The older kids have some more things to do but the kids become a blob mass. I like the general outline of the movie. It doesn't have much comedy that works but the story is a little heart warming. That is until the last act when I lose all interest in the movie. The whole movie is so predictable on auto pilot and I didn't care so much about the individual characters.

This is a great movie for a family nigh in, it has great actors and a funny story. Although I couldn't help thinking that everything was made out to be much more chaotic than it had to be (for instance the paint fight). Otherwise this movie was very entertaining.This movie is about a widow and a widower who have a big flock of children each. When these two meet again at a class reunion they fall in love and decide to get married and this creates a great conflict because the two large families must merge together to become one even larger family.I love Dennis Quaid and this was a great performance from his side.

The original version with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball is one of our favorites and I, for one, am glad they didn't try to remake that story with a new cast. This is really a different story built on the same premise: a widow and widower -- each with a lot of children -- fall in love, get married, and the children are suddenly part of a new and much larger family. Unlike the original, the children don't get a chance to see this coming before it happens. The animosity is instantaneous, particularly since the Beardsley children are used to structure and organization in their lives whereas the North children have been very free and loose. The bonding of familial friendships between the children comes through their common purpose -- to destroy the relationship between their parents. There is something very profound about seeing two enemy groups come together for a common goal only to discover that they don't hate each other at all. A lot of the slapstick is over the top, but it is an entertaining 90 minutes with a message that will never grow old. I am glad to have both versions in my library.