Parent Trap, The (DVD)

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Everything comes in pairs: This is the second DVD release of the second movie version of the story about twins.

When I first heard that the Disney studios were remaking their 1961 Haley Mills film, my first reaction was to wonder why. The first film was a minor family classic; it was in widescreen, stereo, and color. What more could be done with it? Then I watched the 1998 update with Lindsay Lohan, and noted that virtually everything had remained as before, not surprising as both stories are based on the same 1949 novel, "Das Doppelte Lottchen," by Erich Kastner. There are the same characters, the same script, the same settings; even the timings for the two movies are close to the same. Again, what was the point? Moreover, it seemed to me that with the passage of time, children would probably view both movies as ancient history. Yet I found the remake almost equally entertaining as the original, and I was quite satisfied. Maybe that was the point--to enchant a whole new generation of youngsters with the story, while tempting an older generation to watch it again. Whatever, it worked, and I enjoyed it.

Before I forget, let me mention, too, the background songs. In the original movie, the three prominent songs were "The Parent Trap," "For Now For Always," and, most memorably, "Let's Get Together." This time out, there is a plentitude of pop songs as background music, and the "Let's Get Together" tune can be heard during the opening logo and later hummed by Ms. Lohan in a hotel lobby. What's more, the original movie featured a take-off on the "Colonel Bogey March" from "The Bridge on the River Kwai," and this time we hear the march from "The Great Escape." It's all cleverly and seamlessly integrated into the film's framework.

Not that many of you reading this need much reminding about the plot: What with the original having been a smash hit and the newer one a minor hit, almost everybody has seen it. But for the uninitiated, the story concerns twin girls whose parents divorced before they were born, at which point each parent took one of the children to raise, and the kids never meet until they coincidentally show up at the same summer camp. In the original both twins were played by Haley Mills, using trick photography and body doubles. In the new film the twins are both played by Lindsay Lohan, again using split screens, special effects, and body doubles. The biggest difference is that Ms. Lohan at eleven years of age is a few years younger than Ms. Mills was in the role; and Lohan does not appear quite as energetic as Mills was. Still, the new youngster is effective in a most sympathetic way. And, of course, like Mills, Lohan went on to star in several more Disney features: "Freaky Friday," "Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen," and "Herbie: Fully Loaded."

As the parents, the original movie's Brian Keith and Maureen O'Hara are replaced by Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson. Both newer actors are beautiful people and charming in their roles. I actually like Quaid in these lighter parts more than in the heroic ones he's played, but he's a charismatic fellow in anything. Ms. Richardson is also a delight, and it continues to surprise me that she's not in more and bigger pictures.

There is a brief back story this time during the opening titles showing us how the parents meet aboard a cruise ship and fall immediately in love, immediately marry, and almost as immediately divorce. What happens next is more fairy-tale than anything else. The father, Nick Parker, takes Hallie to live with him at his vineyard estate in Northern California's Napa Valley. The Staglin Family Vineyard fills in for the father's spread, and considering that land values in the Napa Valley are, like, $1,000,000 a square inch, the place is obviously worth a fortune. So he's prosperous, to say the least. Meanwhile, the mother takes Annie back to London with her, where she works as a world-famous designer of wedding dresses. She, too, is so prosperous she lives in one of the most posh areas of the city, complete with Bentley and butler. Only in the movies.

Eleven years later, both twins are simultaneously shipped off to a summer camp in the Eastern United States where they meet up for the first time and figure out they have a sister they never knew existed. Then they conspire to meet the parent they've never met by switching places when they return home, as well as try to get the parents back together. Coincidentally, after eleven years neither of these aforementioned gorgeous parents has remarried. Only in the movies.

But there's a big snag to the twin's plans. There's got to be a snag or we wouldn't have a picture. The father has a fiancée, a wicked step-mother-to-be--a shallow, mean-spirited, but very attractive (and very young) publicist named Meredith Blake (Elaine Hendrix). Getting her out of the way is the first major obstacle in the twins' plot to reconfigure their family life.