MoviesForAM "Big Business" had received very mixed reviews upon its release. Perhaps the critics did not anticipate how lousy many mainstream comedies would get as the decades went on. The film is so well executed in plot, comic timing, performances and visuals. Bette Midler actually should have won the Oscar for Best Actress for "Big Business," but the Academy never takes comic roles seriously when it comes to such an honor. Midler's energy and her comedy are expert in "Big Business." The movie is entirely charming and consistently entertaining. Supporting roles are terrifically performed. The comedy and the satire has endured. There are few mainstream movies as underrated as "Big Business."

mark.waltz An overworked country nurse makes the mistake of a lifetime, and for poor country folk having a set of twins at the same time as a pair of wealthy social butterflies, it results in the mix-up to end all mix-ups. 30 something years go by and years later, Bette Midler is the Alexis Carrington like rich bitch who runs a conglomerate. "Is this how you dress for the office? You look like a blood clot!", she tells the receptionist upon entering her conglomerate. "Twin" Lily Tomlin is the shy sort who has much more scruples than her hard-nosed sister, but there's another set of identical twins in Jupiter Hollow where ironically all four were born within minutes of each other. Jupiter Hollow's Bette yodels as she milks a cow and the tougher Tomlin is out to prevent a big city corporation from tearing down the small community in order to put their own sinister, money making plans in order.Learning of a big meeting in New York City, the small-town Midler and Tomlin arrive with the intention of interrupting it to prevent the strip mining of their community. Lovers of all four all gather together where all is revealed after a brilliantly staged repeat of the Groucho/Harpo mirror sequence from "Duck Soup". Each actress adds different qualities to each of their roles, so other than wearing the same outfits in one sequence, it is easy to see who is who, which one is the poorly raised one and which one is the wealthilly raised one. The result is a farce of hysterical proportions that is worth seeing over and over again.

Dragoneyed363 Big Business has always been a movie I love watching from time to time. I will say that Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler never let me down as they got into their completely ludicrous, wacky antics that pay tribute to the old slapstick humor without being too in your face. Bette Midler came out to be the strongest of the two this time though and her performance is again what makes a film. Her character(s) were just so lovable, and Bette Midler's yodel scene was my favorite scene of the movie. One humongous personal problem I found with the movie, and practically this was the only thing wrong with the film, was I think they should have let more time in for the final meeting scene between all 4 of them. I mean, they finally find their twins, and then it has like 4 minutes for them to talk to each other and then goes off. Uh? They could have let us see more, you know? Anyway, I found Big Business to be good, and was just a nice, quaint film to watch indeed.

caa821 This is not a movie which I would have gone to see by my own choice when it was originally issued, but at that time, my great aunt was visiting us. She was a terrific lady, and liked both Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, so I took her to see it early in its first-run at a theater.Surprisingly, I enjoyed it, I suppose partially because she did so thoroughly. It was run on a local channel recently, and I saw it for the second time, and still found it amusing and enjoyable."Twin" stories have long been a staple on stage and screen. They have provided the opportunity for for performers to run the gamut of their acting range, and to chew the scenery like a horde of beavers. In most of these dramas, the "evil twin" represents the most reprehensible of society's creatures - often counterbalanced by the opposite "good" one. Or we're treated, say, to a pair of young girls performing sophomoric jokes on everyone in sight. (I always get the mental image that the writers were sitting around one day, and were devoid of story ideas. Finally one say, "Ah, hell. Let's just make the story about some twins; we can do all the usual identity mix-up stuff while we come up with the plot.")In this drama, two sets of twin girls are mixed at birth - the issues of two expectant couples at the same hick-town hospital: a bumpkin local couple; and a couple from New York, passing through in their limo, the father apparently among New York City's most powerful, wealthy elite.Naturally when grown, these pair of far from identical siblings are different in similar ways in their completely opposite circumstances. Timlin represents the naturally "bumpkin" family, and Midler the "elite." Lily is, of course, the more considerate, benevolent, unselfish and thoughtful in the wealthy setting, the more forcefully outgoing for the rights of her fellow townspeople in the sticks. Bette is the one who runs the family business empire, and her country version wants something more than the seedy hometown.The necessary coincidence of both pairs having the same first names is not a stretch - the unimaginative bumpkin papa simply overhears his counterpoint's expressed choices, and opts for the same.The other many occurrences necessary to this plot before the "four" personally encounter one another, require, of course, a veritable host of coincidences. But (again surprisingly) these are for the most part quite amusing, and not nearly as unbelievable or illogical as one would expect. And there are clever juxtapositions, such as when NYC Midler's country-girl doppelgänger disciplines the spoiled brat son to his father's delight (his mother has indulged the urchin to the father's despair).Besides, the writers and producers seem to have answered the question posed by psychologists from Freud to-date. In the classic genes-versus-environment quandary, this film would seem to be society's answer that the former have to prevail.