TWINS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Two winning comic actors, DeVito and Schwarzenegger, overcome a severely problem-ridden hodge- podge of a script to make a comedy that is at least enjoyable, if little more. Rating: 0.
Hollywood long ago discovered that film formulae carried with them built-in audiences. Make a film in the formula, you get the audience. Frankenstein movies had a built-in audience that was interested in seeing any film about Frankenstein. Abbott and Costello comedies had a different built-in audience. If you make a film like ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN you get both audiences. Never mind the fact that Abbott and Costello film style is really incompatible with Frankenstein film style. The technique of crossing formulae was usually restricted to "B" films; "A" films seemed not to need it. But in the 1980s, while the distinction between "B" films and "A" films is much less obvious, most films made are what used to be "B" films. And crossing formulae is done in clever ways, but is more prevalent than ever. That's why Tom Cruise's young, high-gloss smoothie characters--teenage audience pleasers--appear opposite serious characters from serious adult dramas. In THE COLOR OF MONEY Cruise plays opposite Paul Newman's Fast Eddie Felsen from the realistic, gritty film THE HUSTLER. Then Cruise plays opposite Dustin Hoffman's autistic savant in RAIN MAN. These are films trying to bring in more than one pre-made audience. But the most blatant formula-mixer in recent history is TWINS. This film is a Danny DeVito comedy, an Arnold Schwarzenegger action film, a science fiction film, a warm human relationship film, a crime story, a bit of CROCODILE DUNDEE, and much more. How do they fit all these things together? Not very well. TWINS is more a pile of plot elemnets than an actual story.
To read the credits, TWINS seems to have been made from two different scripts and the result was a film with two different plots going on simultaneously. One is the story of how two brothers created by a scientific experiment go out in search of their origins. The other story is how DeVito gets involved with industrial espionage, ends up in over his head, and is rescued by his large, powerful brother.
The plot of TWINS is full of coincidences which range from unlikely to absurd. It has problems of casting: Arnold Schwarzenegger could be the required age of 35, but DeVito is too old for the part. It assumes that one person could have six different fathers. That is dubious even with modern gene-splicing technology, but it is ludicrous with 1953 technology. And then the concept of the six fathers is never really used in the plot. The climax of the film occurs with DeVito inexplicably knowing how to use a piece of equipment that does not make any sense even when you know what it does. (Sorry, that statement probably will not make sense until you see the film, but people who have seen the film should know what that is all about.) The script of this film is a mess. Any chemistry between DeVito and Schwarzenegger seems forced, but each has talent as a comic actor in his own right and that, together with a pacing that keeps things happening, is what makes the film as watchable as it is. Rate it a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzz!leeper
leeper@mtgzz.att.com
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