In our Great Remakes series, enjoy two versions of THE PARENT TRAP!
The Parent Trap (1961) in 35mm at 2pm
One of the best Disney live-action family films of the 1960s stars fifteen-year-old Hayley Mills in a dual role of twins Sharon and Susan, who were separated at birth when their parents decided to divorce with each taking one child to raise. When the two girls accidentally meet each other at summer camp and realize what transpired, they decide to switch places in order to meet the parent they never got to know, and then hatch a plan to get their estranged folks back together. This was the second of six films Mills made for Disney, following her BAFTA nominated and Juvenile Oscar-winning lead role in Pollyanna (1960). The film features twinning effects that are rather primitive by today’s standards, but were more than convincing back in the day. Much of this is due to Mills’s ability to convince us she is both characters in scenes were Sharon and Susan appear together. The effect reaches its apex with the song the girls perform for their parents, “Let’s Get Together,” written by Disney’s venerable tunesmiths, the Sherman Brothers. The screenplay, by director David Swift, faithfully adapts Erich Kästner’s 1949 German children’s novel Lisa and Lottie, transferring the setting to New England and California.
The Parent Trap (1998) at 4:30pm
For her directorial debut, Nancy Meyers remade this Disney classic about a pair of identical twins who were separated at birth and, upon meeting by chance at summer camp, decide to work together to reunite their divorced parents. Meyers was then half of the prolific husband-and-wife screenwriting team of Nancy Meyers and Charles Shyer, and co-producer of the films they wrote that Shyer directed. These included Irreconcilable Differences, Baby Boom, and the wildly successful 1991 remake of Father of the Bride. For this film, the couple switched roles, with Shyer co-writing and producing the film with Meyers at the helm.
The resulting short film turned out to be superior to anything Shyer had directed, and it launched Meyers into her successful career as a solo writer and director. The film improves on the original picture in many ways. Meyers and Shyer stick closely to David Swift’s screenplay (Swift is credited as one of the writers of this film), but they find all kinds of subtle ways to make the premise and the various comical situations more credible. And as winning as fourteen-year-old Hayley Mills is in the original film, twelve-year-old Lindsay Lohan (making her feature debut) is even better. For one thing, she’s far more skilled at giving each girl a different accent and keeping those speech patterns consistent. This movie also looks fantastic, with far superior twinning effects. As photographed by the legendary cinematographer Dean Cundey (who also shot The Thing, among dozens of other iconic pictures), this modestly budgeted “kiddie movie” is vastly more visually dazzling than 95% of what we’ve gotten at the multiplex for the past 20 years.
You may also like the following events from Somerville Theatre:
- This Monday, 21st July, 07:15 pm, Double Feature: 3:10 to Yuma x 2 in Somerville
- This Wednesday, 23rd July, 11:30 pm, Die! Die! My Darling! 35mm archival print in Somerville, MA
- Next Monday, 28th July, 10:45 pm, Double Feature: The Departed in 35mm + Infernal Affairs in Somerville, MA
Also check out other
Entertainment events in Newry,
Arts events in Newry.
