What do you get when you take two parts Prince and the Pauper, one part The Parent Trap and throw in the Olsen Twins? It Takes Two of course!
This story starts with the very different lives of two identical strangers (Mary-Kate & Ashley): Alyssa, who is the lonely daughter of a wealthy widower (Steve Guttenberg), and Amanda, an orphan with a "street" attitude who is looked after by her...social worker? caretaker? Diane (Kirstie Alley). For the summer, Amanda and her friends from the orphanage are sent to a camp for disadvantaged children, which just happens to be across the lake from Alyssa's enormous summer home. By chance, the two girls run into each other (literally) in the woods and discover they look exactly the same. After a few minutes of conversation they decide to switch places because...why not?! Now they both must deal with the other's problems--Alyssa struggling with Amanda's adoption to an awful family, and Amanda doing her best to get rid of the gold-digging b!tch Alyssa's father is engaged to. While the girls deal with that, Diane and Alyssa's dad meet and begin a romance. So, will Amanda be able to stop the wedding? Will Alyssa be able to get out of the awful adoptive parents' home? Will anyone believe they are actually someone else? Will Diane and Alyssa's dad get together?
This movie is quite bad. As a child I loved it, but that's purely because I loved the Olsen twins/Full House. Everything and everyone in this film is an old cliché that was taken from other books and films that did it much better. There is literally nothing new or interesting about the plot line of this film. The acting also leaves something to be desired. Steve Guttenberg, Kirstie Alley, and Philip Bosco as Vicenzo the butler actually did a decent job with what they were handed, but it was still sub-par. More than anything this movie demonstrated something the world seemed to have missed for many years: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen cannot act for their lives. People forget that they became famous on...not so much acting, but on being cute and essentially being themselves on camera. This is the first role they had where they were not Michelle Tanner or just..."twins" (i.e. themselves)! Neither of them are able to pull off either a high or low class NYC accent and demeanor without sounding like they are pulling it out with a rope. In fact, if I had seen this without knowing who they were, I would think they had never even acted in a school play, nonetheless been "acting" since they were infants. Also, there is something else about this movie that really irritates me. That is, the use of the word "orphan" and Amanda being from an "orphanage". I don't know what films' preoccupation on these anachronistic terms are, but there had not been an orphanage in NYC for over 30 years when this film was made. Not only that, but the term "orphan" has also not been used for a very long time. The fact they are constantly using the word "orphan" in this movie drives me up a wall.
All in all this film is pathetic. It's boring, uninteresting, and has some painful acting on the part of the Olsen twins. Some young children may like it, but you're better off getting The Parent Trap if you must sit through it with them.
This story starts with the very different lives of two identical strangers (Mary-Kate & Ashley): Alyssa, who is the lonely daughter of a wealthy widower (Steve Guttenberg), and Amanda, an orphan with a "street" attitude who is looked after by her...social worker? caretaker? Diane (Kirstie Alley). For the summer, Amanda and her friends from the orphanage are sent to a camp for disadvantaged children, which just happens to be across the lake from Alyssa's enormous summer home. By chance, the two girls run into each other (literally) in the woods and discover they look exactly the same. After a few minutes of conversation they decide to switch places because...why not?! Now they both must deal with the other's problems--Alyssa struggling with Amanda's adoption to an awful family, and Amanda doing her best to get rid of the gold-digging b!tch Alyssa's father is engaged to. While the girls deal with that, Diane and Alyssa's dad meet and begin a romance. So, will Amanda be able to stop the wedding? Will Alyssa be able to get out of the awful adoptive parents' home? Will anyone believe they are actually someone else? Will Diane and Alyssa's dad get together?
This movie is quite bad. As a child I loved it, but that's purely because I loved the Olsen twins/Full House. Everything and everyone in this film is an old cliché that was taken from other books and films that did it much better. There is literally nothing new or interesting about the plot line of this film. The acting also leaves something to be desired. Steve Guttenberg, Kirstie Alley, and Philip Bosco as Vicenzo the butler actually did a decent job with what they were handed, but it was still sub-par. More than anything this movie demonstrated something the world seemed to have missed for many years: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen cannot act for their lives. People forget that they became famous on...not so much acting, but on being cute and essentially being themselves on camera. This is the first role they had where they were not Michelle Tanner or just..."twins" (i.e. themselves)! Neither of them are able to pull off either a high or low class NYC accent and demeanor without sounding like they are pulling it out with a rope. In fact, if I had seen this without knowing who they were, I would think they had never even acted in a school play, nonetheless been "acting" since they were infants. Also, there is something else about this movie that really irritates me. That is, the use of the word "orphan" and Amanda being from an "orphanage". I don't know what films' preoccupation on these anachronistic terms are, but there had not been an orphanage in NYC for over 30 years when this film was made. Not only that, but the term "orphan" has also not been used for a very long time. The fact they are constantly using the word "orphan" in this movie drives me up a wall.
All in all this film is pathetic. It's boring, uninteresting, and has some painful acting on the part of the Olsen twins. Some young children may like it, but you're better off getting The Parent Trap if you must sit through it with them.