When I first heard the expression "Mary, Kate and Ashley Olsen" I assumed it referred to three people rather than two; I had some vague idea that Mary and Kate were twin sisters and Ashley their brother. My error was, in fact, corrected pretty quickly. I had, of course, failed to reckon with two aspects of the American naming system which generally strike us Brits as a bit eccentric, their fondness for hyphenated Christian names and for converting perfectly good male names into female ones. So "Mary-Kate" turned out to be one person rather than two and "Ashley" a girl rather than a boy.
You couldn't go anywhere in the late 1990s or early 2000s without coming across some reference to the Olsen Twins. They quickly became a major element of the popular culture of the period. Every month seemed to bring some new film or television programme featuring them, although their dominance was to be a fairly brief one. They retired from acting in 2004 when they were only eighteen. They have, however, remained in the public eye because of their new career as fashion designers and their younger sister Elizabeth has now become an actress in her own right.
In "Our Lips Are Sealed", made when they were fourteen, the twins play Maddie and Abby Parker, twin sisters who witness a jewel robbery in which the priceless Kneel Diamond (Neil Diamond, geddit?) is stolen. Their evidence is vital in getting the robber convicted, but as the man's uncle is a notorious gangster from the Eastern European nation of Urugli (You're ugly, geddit?) the girls and their family are placed in the FBI's Witness Protection Programme. Unfortunately, Maddie and Abby's lips are far from sealed. They are such blabbermouths that they keep on revealing the family's secret, with the result that the FBI have to keep moving them until they end up in Sydney, Australia. The rest of the film deals with the girls' attempts to fit into their new school, a surfing contest and their outwitting of the two assassins who have been sent by the gangster to hunt them down.
The film's attempts at verbal humour are pretty crude; besides the examples quoted above the notorious Uruglian gangster has the surname Hatchew, which leads to endless "Bless you!" jokes. (Atchoo, geddit?) American preconceptions about Australia (which seem to be much the same as British ones) are another fertile source of humour. Apparently all Australians spend most of their time on the beach, love surfing, keep a kangaroo as a pet and live on a staple diet of Vegemite. They also speak a bizarre and incomprehensible dialect, although some of the words which baffle Maddie and Abby (such as "jumper" for "sweater") are also in common usage in Britain. Oh, and all Aussie girls are called Sheila. (I think we in Britain stopped telling that joke some time in the seventies. There was a related joke about all Aussie men being called Bruce).
A comedy which relies upon bad puns and ethnic stereotypes to get laughs does not seem very promising, but actually I ended up rather enjoying "Our Lips Are Sealed", even though I am (and was even in 2000) far from being a member of the demographic at which the film was clearly aimed. The reason is that the Olsen girls were such natural little performers. Their screen persona was that of smart, sassy youngsters who are always one step ahead of everyone else, be it their parents, the bad guys or the so-called "popular girl" at their new school. (The film transfers to Australia the standard American cliché that every high school is dominated by a bitchy, snobbish clique of "popular girls" whose popularity owes everything to their good looks and their families' wealth and nothing to their personalities, which are invariably obnoxious). They frequently break the "fourth wall" to speak direct to camera, and it is not always clear whether they are doing so as the Parker sisters or as the Olsen sisters.
It is easy to understand why the twins' acting career did not survive their entry into womanhood; they had become too closely identified with childhood and adolescence for anyone to envisage them as adult performers. Other former child stars, notably Shirley Temple, have fallen into the trap of trying to extend their careers past their sell- by date, so Mary-Kate and Ashley were perhaps wise to move into new ventures. This film, however, reveals how entertaining they could be in their heyday. 6/10
You couldn't go anywhere in the late 1990s or early 2000s without coming across some reference to the Olsen Twins. They quickly became a major element of the popular culture of the period. Every month seemed to bring some new film or television programme featuring them, although their dominance was to be a fairly brief one. They retired from acting in 2004 when they were only eighteen. They have, however, remained in the public eye because of their new career as fashion designers and their younger sister Elizabeth has now become an actress in her own right.
In "Our Lips Are Sealed", made when they were fourteen, the twins play Maddie and Abby Parker, twin sisters who witness a jewel robbery in which the priceless Kneel Diamond (Neil Diamond, geddit?) is stolen. Their evidence is vital in getting the robber convicted, but as the man's uncle is a notorious gangster from the Eastern European nation of Urugli (You're ugly, geddit?) the girls and their family are placed in the FBI's Witness Protection Programme. Unfortunately, Maddie and Abby's lips are far from sealed. They are such blabbermouths that they keep on revealing the family's secret, with the result that the FBI have to keep moving them until they end up in Sydney, Australia. The rest of the film deals with the girls' attempts to fit into their new school, a surfing contest and their outwitting of the two assassins who have been sent by the gangster to hunt them down.
The film's attempts at verbal humour are pretty crude; besides the examples quoted above the notorious Uruglian gangster has the surname Hatchew, which leads to endless "Bless you!" jokes. (Atchoo, geddit?) American preconceptions about Australia (which seem to be much the same as British ones) are another fertile source of humour. Apparently all Australians spend most of their time on the beach, love surfing, keep a kangaroo as a pet and live on a staple diet of Vegemite. They also speak a bizarre and incomprehensible dialect, although some of the words which baffle Maddie and Abby (such as "jumper" for "sweater") are also in common usage in Britain. Oh, and all Aussie girls are called Sheila. (I think we in Britain stopped telling that joke some time in the seventies. There was a related joke about all Aussie men being called Bruce).
A comedy which relies upon bad puns and ethnic stereotypes to get laughs does not seem very promising, but actually I ended up rather enjoying "Our Lips Are Sealed", even though I am (and was even in 2000) far from being a member of the demographic at which the film was clearly aimed. The reason is that the Olsen girls were such natural little performers. Their screen persona was that of smart, sassy youngsters who are always one step ahead of everyone else, be it their parents, the bad guys or the so-called "popular girl" at their new school. (The film transfers to Australia the standard American cliché that every high school is dominated by a bitchy, snobbish clique of "popular girls" whose popularity owes everything to their good looks and their families' wealth and nothing to their personalities, which are invariably obnoxious). They frequently break the "fourth wall" to speak direct to camera, and it is not always clear whether they are doing so as the Parker sisters or as the Olsen sisters.
It is easy to understand why the twins' acting career did not survive their entry into womanhood; they had become too closely identified with childhood and adolescence for anyone to envisage them as adult performers. Other former child stars, notably Shirley Temple, have fallen into the trap of trying to extend their careers past their sell- by date, so Mary-Kate and Ashley were perhaps wise to move into new ventures. This film, however, reveals how entertaining they could be in their heyday. 6/10
