Film Forum

Nancy Meyers’THE PARENT TRAP

Nancy Meyers · 1998 · U.S. · 127 min

“THE PARENT TRAP is based on story elements so ancient and foolproof, they must have their roots in Shakespeare’s day: the twins changing places, their divorced parents falling in love again, and, for low comedy, their servants falling in love, too. And of course there’s a wicked would-be stepmother lurking about. The story is ageless and so is the gimmick: The twins are played by the same actress, using trick photography. Hayley Mills did it in 1961, and Lindsay Lohan does it this time, seamlessly. One twin is American, one is British, but even their accents don’t help us tell them apart, since half of the time they’re pretending to be each other. ‘I’ll teach you to be me, and you teach me to be you,’ one twin says, after they meet by chance at summer camp and realize that they’ve been raised separately by divorced parents. It’s a splendid story premise, but in a way, the switch is just the setup, and the real story involves the parents. They’re played by Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson, who bring such humor and warmth to the movie that I was amazed to find myself actually caring about their romance.” – Roger Ebert