How do you do,
As you can tell, if you are in the Northern Hemisphere, it's spring! Time to open up the house to let in some air, refresh the interior air, do some spring cleaning, pack up the winter gear and bring out the summer clothes, and be mindful of pollen and severe weather (currently, it's peak tornado season). But, some good things do come with spring and if you have had twenty of those you would already know that by now.
Now that we have gone through Lent, feasted in the Passover, and hunted eggs in Easter (unless some of y'all either don't do all that or are just not Christian), we now enter another movie turning 20.
As a boy, I grew up watching the original The Parent Trap with Haley Mills, Maureen O'Hara, and Brian Kieth. The movie was historical for the period, showing one a glimpse of life in the 1960s. Feminists would delight that the original had female leads who are more than just eye candy (Mills was going through puberty then), but are very active in the plot line. Besides, this movie was made as the Second Wave Feminism was kicking off. At the same time, it's a family oriented movie full of humor and romance that can stick to you. It also shows that Walt Disney was not all about animated movies, but he did live action movies as well and most of them are just as good as the animated ones. So, you can imagine the surprise some of us had when Disney Pictures decided to create a remake of The Parent Trap with Lindsay Lohan. Expectations on it were high.
The plot line is the same. Two girls who are identical meet in summer camp and it turns out they are twin sisters. Then they learn their parents divorced long ago and they hatch up a plan to bring them back together by switching places. The plan carries out with one meeting her mother and the other meeting her father, who is engaged to marry another woman. So, that puts a wrench in their plans and it brings the mother to the father's location and the trio prevent the remarriage and reunite as a family.
Sounds the same, looks the same. There are some differences between the remake and the original, however. For starters, a prologue on the parents, played by Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson, is shown in a romantic meeting on a cruise. The scene does present a problem as it works out too well and brings investment to the characters that makes one question how they divorced. Unlike the original where no such prologue occurs. It's instead just dived in where it gradually gets revealed how the original couple (O'Hara and Kieth) divorced due to their constant fighting. At least it worked well for the 1960s. In the new version, it's never really explained why they divorced, other than going their different ways upon the birth of Annie and Hallie.
Little is done, of course, in the original with Susan and Sharon, other than make one a tom boy and the other a Bostonian, yet Sharon is shown to get goosebumps when she feels something is about to happen. With Annie and Hallie, hardly much is done but we do see that they have the same tastes in food, which makes their discovery of being twins more predictable. While Susan and Sharon came from opposite ends of the United States, Annie and Hallie have the Atlantic Ocean to separate them. I have no comment on the idea of making one grow up in the UK while the other grew up in the US, whatsoever.
As if a strange connection to the original, the fiancee of the father figure is the daughter of a woman named Vicky, who is played by the same actress as Vicky in the original. It seems a strange coincidence, though it may have been intentional. We also see the grandfather ask the same question as in the original. This is definitely intentional. Intentional references to the original seem to be a thing with remakes. If you were to watch the silent film The Ten Commandments along side the 1956 version, you would see elements shared in the two movies when it came to the Exodus moments. The difference while they both feature the story of Moses, they had different topics in mind. The two versions of The Parent Trap don't seem to have different topics; only different settings and characters. Now, if we look into Vicky in the original and see her as the mother to Meredith, we would have to consider this a case of history repeating itself. Now, it would have tried to have it in the remake for the mother to be engaged and the father try to win her back, but then there wouldn't be very primal. It would instead be something seen in Sweet Home Alabama. Not only that, the original at least ended with divorced couple reconciled and getting married again (as shown in Susan's dream). The remake even adds the cliched climax where Hallie and her father meet up with her sister and mother at the airport and they all decide to be a family again.
I would think the different endings have more to do with the films of the period. I don't know much about Quad and Richardson, but I do know that O'Hara and Keith starred together in McClintock! with John Wayne. In McClintock!, O'Hara and John Wayne play a divorced couple who are brought together by their daughter, who also went east with her mother. The set up with McClintock! and The Parent Trap are similar in that stage, minus the twins plot, especially with O'Hara having to deal with a man who is bad at communicating with her while her own stubbornness gets in the way. In both movies, things come to blow quite literally, but with different results. One thing I noted in the original is how Brian Keith tries to be like John Wayne in mannerisms and even try to resemble him in the movie, though he doesn't get it all there. Towards the end, Keith doesn't resort to comedy induced abuse the way John Wayne has in his pairings with O'Hara, resulting in their reconciling in the end over dinner, which, dare I say, Keith winds up doing what Wayne has failed to do in all five of the movies he was with O'Hara: tame her? As I said, I don't know much about Quad and Richardson. The first has his own character that wouldn't be defined until the 2000s as that concerned father figure while Richardson seems like a Meg Ryan wanna be.
As to Lindsay Lohan, she doesn't try to outdo Haley Mills in this version. I mean, Haley Mills came all the way from England to delight us as Pollyanna and then as Susan and Sharon. Though she tries real hard to hide it, her British accent does show through when playing her characters (it can seem strange to one who is suppose to be from California, though). Lohan is all American, yet she plays one girl raised in England and she attempts to create a British accent. Lohan's wide eyed innocence does give her one edge over Haley Mills' sophistication however. Not only that, it is refreshing to see what Lohan use to look before she grew up. Now, if you are wondering why they didn't get actual twins for the roles, I have no idea. I don't have any thoughts on why Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, the most famous set of twins of the 1990s, weren't cast in this movie, other than maybe the pay rates they demanded or they weren't old enough. I don't really know.
The Parent Trap might not make expectations to some, but it is worth while to see how things can be repeated. An added plus is how they can make two Lohans on screen without the problems that can happened in the past, thanks to computer technology. Now, if there is a third The Parent Trap coming the technology will be even better, unless they decide to use actual twins. Also, the twins in the next round don't have to be girls. You could have two boys meet in camp and realize they are brothers and see where that will lead, for anything original.
Speaking of remakes, stay tuned for May as one is stumping to this blog!
The plot line is the same. Two girls who are identical meet in summer camp and it turns out they are twin sisters. Then they learn their parents divorced long ago and they hatch up a plan to bring them back together by switching places. The plan carries out with one meeting her mother and the other meeting her father, who is engaged to marry another woman. So, that puts a wrench in their plans and it brings the mother to the father's location and the trio prevent the remarriage and reunite as a family.
Sounds the same, looks the same. There are some differences between the remake and the original, however. For starters, a prologue on the parents, played by Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson, is shown in a romantic meeting on a cruise. The scene does present a problem as it works out too well and brings investment to the characters that makes one question how they divorced. Unlike the original where no such prologue occurs. It's instead just dived in where it gradually gets revealed how the original couple (O'Hara and Kieth) divorced due to their constant fighting. At least it worked well for the 1960s. In the new version, it's never really explained why they divorced, other than going their different ways upon the birth of Annie and Hallie.
Little is done, of course, in the original with Susan and Sharon, other than make one a tom boy and the other a Bostonian, yet Sharon is shown to get goosebumps when she feels something is about to happen. With Annie and Hallie, hardly much is done but we do see that they have the same tastes in food, which makes their discovery of being twins more predictable. While Susan and Sharon came from opposite ends of the United States, Annie and Hallie have the Atlantic Ocean to separate them. I have no comment on the idea of making one grow up in the UK while the other grew up in the US, whatsoever.
As if a strange connection to the original, the fiancee of the father figure is the daughter of a woman named Vicky, who is played by the same actress as Vicky in the original. It seems a strange coincidence, though it may have been intentional. We also see the grandfather ask the same question as in the original. This is definitely intentional. Intentional references to the original seem to be a thing with remakes. If you were to watch the silent film The Ten Commandments along side the 1956 version, you would see elements shared in the two movies when it came to the Exodus moments. The difference while they both feature the story of Moses, they had different topics in mind. The two versions of The Parent Trap don't seem to have different topics; only different settings and characters. Now, if we look into Vicky in the original and see her as the mother to Meredith, we would have to consider this a case of history repeating itself. Now, it would have tried to have it in the remake for the mother to be engaged and the father try to win her back, but then there wouldn't be very primal. It would instead be something seen in Sweet Home Alabama. Not only that, the original at least ended with divorced couple reconciled and getting married again (as shown in Susan's dream). The remake even adds the cliched climax where Hallie and her father meet up with her sister and mother at the airport and they all decide to be a family again.
I would think the different endings have more to do with the films of the period. I don't know much about Quad and Richardson, but I do know that O'Hara and Keith starred together in McClintock! with John Wayne. In McClintock!, O'Hara and John Wayne play a divorced couple who are brought together by their daughter, who also went east with her mother. The set up with McClintock! and The Parent Trap are similar in that stage, minus the twins plot, especially with O'Hara having to deal with a man who is bad at communicating with her while her own stubbornness gets in the way. In both movies, things come to blow quite literally, but with different results. One thing I noted in the original is how Brian Keith tries to be like John Wayne in mannerisms and even try to resemble him in the movie, though he doesn't get it all there. Towards the end, Keith doesn't resort to comedy induced abuse the way John Wayne has in his pairings with O'Hara, resulting in their reconciling in the end over dinner, which, dare I say, Keith winds up doing what Wayne has failed to do in all five of the movies he was with O'Hara: tame her? As I said, I don't know much about Quad and Richardson. The first has his own character that wouldn't be defined until the 2000s as that concerned father figure while Richardson seems like a Meg Ryan wanna be.
As to Lindsay Lohan, she doesn't try to outdo Haley Mills in this version. I mean, Haley Mills came all the way from England to delight us as Pollyanna and then as Susan and Sharon. Though she tries real hard to hide it, her British accent does show through when playing her characters (it can seem strange to one who is suppose to be from California, though). Lohan is all American, yet she plays one girl raised in England and she attempts to create a British accent. Lohan's wide eyed innocence does give her one edge over Haley Mills' sophistication however. Not only that, it is refreshing to see what Lohan use to look before she grew up. Now, if you are wondering why they didn't get actual twins for the roles, I have no idea. I don't have any thoughts on why Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, the most famous set of twins of the 1990s, weren't cast in this movie, other than maybe the pay rates they demanded or they weren't old enough. I don't really know.
The Parent Trap might not make expectations to some, but it is worth while to see how things can be repeated. An added plus is how they can make two Lohans on screen without the problems that can happened in the past, thanks to computer technology. Now, if there is a third The Parent Trap coming the technology will be even better, unless they decide to use actual twins. Also, the twins in the next round don't have to be girls. You could have two boys meet in camp and realize they are brothers and see where that will lead, for anything original.
Speaking of remakes, stay tuned for May as one is stumping to this blog!
