A pig at the breakfast table?

Even the most lovesick newlywed might question a pet pig sitting with a dozen and a half children eating their morning meal. But in the comedy "Yours, Mine & Ours," the fastidious Coast Guard admiral (Dennis Quaid) doesn't object.

	'Yours, Mine & Ours' Rating: PG for some mild crude humor. Starring: Dennis Quaid, Rene Russo. Director: Raja Gosnell. 'Yours, Mine & Ours' Web site

Yes, this is not your baby-boomer's "Yours, Mine and Ours," the 1968 comedy starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda as a couple who brought 18 children into their marriage and then had a baby, which accounted for the "ours." It was based on a real woman, who wrote about her famously big family in "Who Gets the Drumstick?"

This time, Helen (Rene Russo) has 10 offspring and Frank Beardsley (Quaid) has eight. She's a free-spirited purse designer whose husband died in a car accident; they had four children and adopted another six after serving as foster parents. Frank, meanwhile, is a widower with eight children who has returned to his hometown of New London, Conn., after moving his brood all over the country.

Helen and Frank were high school sweethearts who reunite, impulsively marry and find themselves trying to make their bumpily blended family work. They move into a home the size of a small bed-and-breakfast (complete with a lighthouse) and wait for their children to get along. But that only happens once they bond over a common enemy: their parents.

"Yours, Mine & Ours" bears more than a passing resemblance to "Cheaper by the Dozen," with comedic chaos in any number of places, usually involving Quaid being plunged, face first, into a pan of paint or a small pool of goo in a home improvement store.

Googling, cell phones and Webcasting help to update the story, but it seems stuck in a time when parents left the chores to a single inattentive housekeeper. That is what happens with Mrs. Munion (Linda Hunt), who worked for Frank before Helen came along.

I remember seeing the Ball-Fonda film at the Bellevue Theater at age 12 or so, and I loved it. This one seems more like artificial sweetener than real sugar, but the younger members of the audience should delight in the prospect of imagining life in a family of 20 -- if you don't count the pet pig.