A classic
remake
By Ervell E.
Menezes
SO, the 1961, hit The Parent
Trap which catapulted Hayley Mills to stardom has
eventually been remade. Hollywood just cant resist
doing such things. That Hayley Mills also made The
Family Way with Hywel Bennett (it is about a young
husband who cannot consummate his marriage) in 1966, and Pretty
Polly alongside Shashi Kapoor in 1967, is academic
but she slowly rode out into the Hollywood sunset after
marrying one of the Boulting brothers with whom she made The
Family Way. He was twice her age.
The Parent Trap is the story of
twins who help bring their separated parents together, a
cute enough subject that won many hearts in the 1960s.
This version is somewhat updated, made more contemporary.
Based on a popular German childrens story Das
Doppelete Lottchen by Erich Kastner it is set in two
continents, the United States and Britain, and has
Lindsay Lohan playing the both the twins, Hallie Parker
and Annie James, who accidentally meet at a summer camp
for girls in Maine, start of by establishing their
identities and then go about the rather difficult task of
reconciling their long-separated parents.
Hallie is growing up in
California with her vineyard-owner father Nick Parker
(Dennis Quaid). Annie is raised in fashionable London by
her mother Elizabeth James (Natasha Richardson) a
renowned wedding gown designer. Pranksters in their own
right, they are made to spend days in an isolation camp
where they get to know each other better. One of their
conversations runs like this:
Hallie: So if your mom
is my mom and my dad is your dad... and we are both born
on October 11, then you and I are ... like ... sisters.
Annie: Sisters? Hallie,
were like...twins.
Their game plan is to
switch places, with Hallie going to London to see her
"long lost" mother and Annie going to
California to do the same with her father. But when Annie
gets there it is only to see her father being dazzled by
a sexy and ambitious journalist Meredith Blake (Elaine
Hendrix) who under the guise of doing a story on the
vineyard owner intends becoming the new Mrs Parker.
The screenplay by David
Swift, Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer has been made
contemporary and though the slapstick comedy in the
beginning can be annoying, director Nancy Meyers works
wonders with the love angle. The precocious twins,
hogging the best lines, do their thing and in the process
endear themselves to the audiences.
Like in most
childrens films, it is the adults who are made to
look ridiculous and it is journalist Meredith who is made
a target of the twins wrath and becomes a sort of Cruella
de Vil (remember 101 Dalmatians?) in the process.
But there is more romance when Annies cute butler
Martin (Simon Kunz) finds Hallies maid Chessey
(Lisa Ann Walter) ideal company.
Getting Lindsay Lohan to
do a double role calls for a good deal of high-tech and
veteran cinematographer Dean Cundey has handled most of
these scenes with debutante Lindsay Lohan doing an
excellent job after getting over her initial exuberance.
Dennis Quaid is his usual credible self though he has to
exercise a good deal of restraint while Natasha
Richardson is sufficiently sophisticated as a British
dressmaker but is able to show her more human side in
dealing with romance. Joanna Barnes who played the
"other woman" in the 1961 film does a cameo as
Merediths mother, but the part is clearly academic.
A subject as cute as
this is bound to work and though it takes a little time
to settle down, the action builds up to a crescendo.
Another significant development is that women are
beginning to cry again. Ever since womens lib came
in over two decades ago, Hollywood seemed to take it upon
itself to show men as vulnerable by getting them to cry.
Now it seems the clock has turned a full circle.
Yes, The Parent Trap
is worthy remake of that classic which is more than one
can say of so many of todays remakes.
Its back to horror
in Lake Placid. And just horror for horrors
sake with little credibility and even less cinematic
class. In a way it tries to imitate the Jaws
phenomenon. First came the whale (Moby Dick), then
came the shark, then the snake in Anaconda and now
the crocodile. How the crocodile came to be in Maine
(where Lake Placid is situated) is hard to believe but
the incredibility goes further. The storyline too is
thin.
Take an uptown New
Yorker with manicured nails and a cell phone and put her
in the wilderness in the midst of adventure. Why? Because
her boss wants to have an affair with her colleague. So
palaeontologist Kelly Scott (Bridget Fonda) finds herself
in the wilderness to probe a spate of accidents taking
place at Lake Placid.
Not unexpectedly she
doesnt take to Fish and Game Warden Jack Wells
(Bill Pullman) who has to investigate the phenomenon
along with Sheriff Hank Keough (Brendan Gleeson). Then to
create a more-the-merrier group enters eccentric
mythology Professor Hector Cyr (Oliver Platt) and you
have a motley crowd. True, the film starts with some cute
lines but the screenplay by David E. Kelly then
deteriorates and director Steve Miner is handicapped with
a weak story.
If youre looking
for nature in its pristine beauty there is a lot of it,
rather well captured by cinematographer Daryn Okada. And
the 30-foot crocodile is well created. But the wafer-thin
plot falls flat much before the film gets over. Bridget
Fonda who has proved her mettle in other action films Single
White Female is one of them), does her best to
salvage this film. And though the romance angle, the
love-hate bit between her and Bill Pullman, works
theres little else that does.
Oliver Platt is not my
idea of a comic hero (hes in Mouse Hunt and The
Impostors) and here the comic element seems out of
place. But if you lull your reasoning powers and accept
Hollywoods anything-is-possible premise you might
even grow to enjoy the shock treatment, but no Lake
Placid is not everyones cup of tea and
thats putting things mildly. If youve been
brought up on good horror films in the best Hollywood
tradition, this is eminently avoidable.
And now just a bit about
Shekhar Kapur and his Elizabeth I havent yet seen
the film but this hu-ha with the Censors is quite
pathetic. Does he have to resort to all this to make his
film a box-office hit. First he says hell not
accept any cuts. Hed rather not release the film.
Later he says hell accept the cuts of the revising
committee. Does he have to blow hot and cold, like this?
I know the late Stanley Kubrick refused to take the cuts
in Barry Lyndon in the 1970s, but then he stuck to
what he said and the film was never released in India.
Of course I was sorry
that for the Oscars night show on television the camera
ignored his presence which was quite racist. But then I
do not condone his double-speak with regard to the
release of Elizabeth. Hes emulating Mira
Nair and her act in Kama Sutra. Mr Kapur you are
too good a film-maker to have to resort to these
gimmicks.
This
feature was published on September 5, 1999
|