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That much they get.
There was nothing wrong with the original movie, of course, about a pair of twins (played by Hayley Mills) who conspire to reunite their divorced parents (Brian Keith and Maureen O'Hara), and there's nothing horribly wrong with this remake that a little transfusion of warm blood wouldn't cure. Although motion control cameras and computer compositing techniques enabled director Nancy Meyers to create much more natural-looking shots of the twin girls (played here by Lindsay Lohan) on screen at the same time, there is still a self-consciousness and a forced quality to much of the humor that this "TPT" redux just can't shake.
Dennis Quaid plays Nick Parker to Natasha Richardson's Elizabeth James, ex-wife and mother of their 11-year-old twins, Hallie and Annie. He's a wine maker in Napa Valley; she's a dress designer in London. When they split up, each took a daughter to raise on his and her home continent and the twain have never met.
That is until summer camp in Maine, where, unbeknown to all concerned, Hallie and Annie will encounter each other for the first time.
The staff and population of this particular camp are a singularly unobservant bunch. It takes forever for a camper to even notice that the two girls bear more than a passing resemblance to each other and when she finally does, this Sherlockian bombshell is dropped: "They look alike!"
"This is, like, mind-boggling," says Hallie.
Um, not really.
Another eternity is wasted before the Parker pair realizes they are not just doppelgangers but sisters, and that's when they hatch their devious plot to masquerade as each other in order to force the parents to see each other again. (Never mind the little detail that Mummy and Daddy just sent them thousands of miles away to camp unescorted. Why should their parents hop on a plane just because they got the wrong daughter back?)
Meanwhile Hallie posing as Annie arrives in London, where she and Elizabeth are shown re-creating the Beatles' famous "Abbey Road" album cover and then a bronze statue waves at the girl as she drives by. Not cute, I'm afraid, but cutesy.
Stateside, Annie posing as Hallie fools everyone but the family dog. (Lord, what fools these mortals be!) The situation suddenly becomes crucial when Annie discovers that Nick is engaged to be married to someone named Meredith (Elaine Hendrix). She's a bottle-blonde, listens to rap and works as a gasp! publicist. Hence, she is the devil incarnate.
Audience members less sour or perhaps merely closer to kindergarten age than yours truly will probably take sufficient pleasure in the predictable resolution of this innocuous, family-oriented farce. Clocking in at just over two hours, however, "The Parent Trap" is a tad on the long side, and I can't be certain that the kicking of the seats behind me came from the untrammeled enthusiasm of youth or the fidgeting of a budding critic.
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