...a delightful, juvenile, romantic-comedy romp, and, yes, maybe it works for adults, too.
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When "The Parent Trap" came out in 1961, I was in high school. It starred Haley Mills and was distinctly a "girl's movie." I avoided it like a pubescent plague. Indeed, I continued avoiding it for over forty years until the DVD showed up on my doorstep. I admit I still tried to avoid it, but my wife was ecstatic; it was one of her favorite movies when she was young. Needless to say, I approached the whole affair with a degree of trepidation. I shouldn't have. I was mildly relieved to find it's a pleasant-enough children's entertainment that should also hold up pretty well for kids today. For adults, I make no such guarantees, but it's sure to win over a few folks who might beforehand have thought otherwise. The Disney studios present both the movie and a load of extras in a special edition, two-disc set.
Ms. Mills, in her early teens at the time, plays a pair of twins, aged thirteen. Yes, a pair of twins. Thanks to some amazingly good trick photography that is as convincing as ever and some excellent acting with herself and her stage double, Mills may as well have been twins in real life. In any case, she plays twins who have been separated at an early age, rediscover one another, and plot to reunite their parents and get everyone back where they belong. It's corny and farfetched, but by and large it works.
The twins find one another at summer camp. Sharon is a rich, sheltered, upper-class kid from Boston; Susan is a rich, not-as-sheltered, more carefree kid from California. We know where they're from because they say so and because Mills changes her accent for each girl. Unfortunately, she still sounds British most of the time, but I wouldn't hold that against her. So Sharon and Susan meet coincidentally at camp, and it's hate at first sight. Taking an immediate dislike to the fact that they look alike, they begin to play practical jokes on one another, culminating in a knockdown, drag-out fight, for which they are duly punished. They're forced to live together for the rest of the summer, a punishment suited to fit the crime. Naturally, once they're together they get to like each other, and from there it isn't long before they figure out they're related: each having the same birthday and each living with a single parent, Sharon with her mother in Boston, Susan with her father in Monterey, CA. Their initial discovery that they're long-lost twin sisters is surely the most touching scene in the picture and crucial for believing everything that follows. The trick now is their getting their parents back together. They decide to switch places and set a trap for the unsuspecting mom and dad.
It's rather a long film for its slender story line, and I would have suspected had I seen it on its first release that it was possibly too long for its intended audience. But it obviously became a smash hit, so what do I know. The plot also requires that one suspend one's disbelief considerably. I mean, even identical twins can't be so convincing as to fool both their parents, I'm sure. But these do.
Brian Keith plays the father, Mitch, in a gruff, papa-bear, Brian Keith sort of way. Maureen O'Hara plays the mother, Margaret, and she never looked more beautiful. Except perhaps today, forty years later, in a DVD interview. The magic of genes, money, and modern science, I suppose. The girls' meetings with the mother and father they had never known (and can't now reveal themselves to) are the second most touching scenes in the film. Charlie Ruggles plays the girls' grandfather as the wise, kindly old fellow he always seemed to portray in movies, and Cathleen Nesbitt plays the grandmother, a stern old grump who grows on you. Completing the picture and complicating matters considerably more than they already are is Mitch's fortune-seeking new fiancee, Vicky Robinson, played by Joanna Barnes. She makes a wonderfully greedy, grasping villain.
Most of the film's comedy derives from the girls' attempts at deception, as might be expected; however, for me some unintentional humor showed up in the settings. Mitch lives in Monterey, so when his new daughter in disguise returns home, they motor along the Central California coast past Pebble Beach and through the Monterey Peninsula's famous 17-Mile Drive. Then, when they reach their house, they are clearly arrived in one of Disney's most-preferred shooting locations, the Golden Oak Ranch near Burbank in Southern California, the same locale used for "Old Yeller," "Zorro," "The Swamp Fox," "Flubber," and dozens of other Disney studio hits. I guess you have to live in California to appreciate this bit of Hollywood chicanery.
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[release]10342[/release]