Alana Fu Love the pranks the twins played on each other, Hayley Mills gave a lovely musical performance towards the end, and it's also amusing to see her throwing a tantrum. So much for the "trap", the "parent" part though, is pretty horrible. Their dad seems to be the worst dad on earth, probably the worst man too. How can any man not fall in love with MAUREEN O HARA the first time he sees her(after 13 years)?? She has to actually get out of her way to trick them to break their engagement?? And for a man who abandoned her and separated her from her child years ago (I assumed), let her kid be slapped by a stranger and did nothing about it, not to mention he's barely handsome and has no personality what so ever at all. That's just ridiculous. She should have been still mad at him, and he had too crawl on his knees to win her back. Actually she and the kids deserve better.

kadeeq Vicki exclaims, "Are you inferring that I'd marry your father for his money?" "If the shoe fits, wear it," responds Sharon.The Parent Trap, filmed in 1961, is about twin girls that meet each other at a summer camp. The girls do not get along because they look like each other (as weird as that sounds) and get in trouble because of the games and pranks that cause mischief. The girls get sent into the same cabin as punishment. They have to learn how to work together for the rest of the summer camp. One day Susan and Sharon decide to converse with each other. They share information about where they are from, and things they like to do. Sharon shares that she lives with her mom, and Susan shares that she lives alone with her dad. After a few more comparisons, they realize that they are long lost twins. Sharon and Susan use the rest of the summer camp to get to know each other and their families. Sharon cuts her hair the same as Susan because they decide to switch places. Sharon takes Susan's place at home, and Susan takes Sharon's place. Sharon meets her father, Mitch, for the first time and comes to realize that her father is in love with another young lady named Vicki. Vicki wants to marry the twins' father because of his wealth. Sharon calls Susan and begs her to bring their mother to California so she can stop the wedding. Susan and her mother fly out to California so they can get this confusion resolved. Sharon and Susan plan to destroy their father's wedding plans. Sharon and Susan set up romantic dinners for their mother and father. Sharon and Susan's mother, Maggie, meets Vicki, she does her best to embarrass Mitch. Maggie does not want Mitch to get married to Vicki because she secretly still loves Mitch. Sharon and Susan do everything they can to stop all wedding plans with Mitch and Vicki. The family plans a camping trip and Vicki throws a fit. Vicki does not want Maggie to come because she is the 'ex-wife'. Sharon and Susan are disappointed when they found out that their mother will not be coming on the camping trip. They plan to prank Vicki on the camping trip because they know how much Vicki does not enjoy the outdoors. Vicki did not enjoy the camping trip with Mitch and the girls because of the pranks Sharon and Susan pull. Sharon and Susan had lots of practice at summer camp, so they were pros at pranking Vicki, and getting her to not like the girls. Sharon and Susan gained up on Vicki to make her leave. Vicki called off the wedding because she was fed up with the girls. Mitch, of course, picked his girls over Vicki. Maggie was secretly overjoyed with this news when they came home from camping. Mitch and Maggie end up falling in love for the second time. Sharon and Susan could finally live together without switching places.The climax of the movie is when Susan and Sharon find out that Mitch is wanting to get remarried to Vicki. The movie now has a problem, and it's now the screenwriter's job to come up with a solution. The girls tell their mother, Maggie, and she is not thrilled about the news. The screenwriter uses Maggie to notice the problem and fix it. Maggie drops little hints in the movie to show that she is still interested in Mitch. Does Mitch recognize those hints?Mitch does not recognize that Maggie still loves him. Mitch has to figure out if Vicki is the right person to marry, or if he truly loves Maggie. It was made clearly that Maggie has already made up her mind, and goes to visit Mitch to win his heart back. Susan and Sharon have decided that once they get their parents back together, they can live together and not have to travel to see each other. Susan and Sharon think that this is the answer to the problem. The twins don't know that getting back together after a divorce is not an easy thing. Mitch and Maggie would have to work out all sorts of problems to get it to work, and what if they don't really love each other? Susan and Sharon were very lucky because it works out for them.

brefane Questionable Disney film with Hayley Mills playing 2 roles; twins whose existence was kept from the other due to an improbable and cold-hearted decision by their selfish, divorced parents played by a lovely Maureen O'Hara and a tubby Brian Keith who's notably lacking in warmth. Mills doesn't make the twins distinctive though the special effects are fine and unobtrusive. The big problem with the film is that the adults are childish and unappealing and Keith and O' Hara don't belong together and what brought them together in the first place remains a mystery. Pity Joanna Barnes who was so good in Auntie Mame (1958), she has a thankless role and has been prematurely aged by hairstyle, make-up and photography. The supporting cast made up of familiar faces is dull and David Swift's direction of this big screen sitcom is anything but swift.

popcorninhell No doubt as a penance for releasing scores of animated films without cogent family units, Disney released The Parent Trap; a Hayley Mills starring, anti-divorce film that had to have felt dated on arrival. In it, a set of estranged identical twins meet by sheer happenstance at camp, trade places, and attempt to bring their divorced parents back together again. The plot immediately appealed to me, even though I had seen the Lindsay Lohan remake. It's a story about the difficulties of preserving the family unit, the unfairness of divorce on young children and the implications of love when faced with the practicalities of life. So naturally Disney sidesteps such themes to make a film as fluffy and unnecessary as a feather boa.Okay, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little. The young Hayley Mills who had just started her Disney movie blitz is at her best as the likable twins Susan and Sharon. Both characters have personalities that are just developed enough to tell them apart but in case its too subtle one has a bad case of Long Island lockjaw. Their hijinks are fun, their humor agreeable and the end result is one of the more charming performances to come from a child actor.I'm actually quite concerned for these kids who have to deal with such narcissistic parents. Sure Disney glosses over the reasons why they got divorced in the first place but its easy to see their personalities are just too self-absorbed to be loving partners...or parents. If you're the proud parents of twins or triplets or sextuplets, you'd be able to narrow in on who's Justin and Dustin wouldn't you? That puzzle would be even less difficult if one of them had been a stranger to you for thirteen or so years but this all seems to be above their heads. Its only when one of the twins finally blurts out the truth that the families discover there's something rotten in the state of Massachusetts.The parents get even worse when they reunite and start exchanging rancorous chit-chat. The father (Brian Keith) you see is about to marry a much younger gold digger who, of course, exemplifies the evil stepmother trope we've all come to expect. So it only makes sense that the man's ex-wife (Maureen O'Hara) takes a trip to the coast, unannounced, totting one of two Machiavellian moppets, making catty comments, and dressing in the man's bathrobe. She then prances around the grounds while he's entertaining in a twisted game of hide-and-seek. Once they actually meet up, they of course argue until she literally punches him in the face in front of their kids! By that point, the couple was one mimosa away from "Thunderdome".If either of them were smart they'd get a restraining order against each other and shuttle both kids back and forth between California and Massachusetts. Not an idyllic solution, but its better than living with "The War of the Roses" (1988) 24/7. But alas they do stick it out together in the end because everything is supposed to be cheery, rosy and bright. It's a Disney movie after all; there are no tears in Disney movies! I just fear that kids with divorced parents will see this movie and want to imitate it which is kind of sad when you think about it. Its a hard lesson to learn kids, but sometimes a divorced household is better than one where one parent's in the morgue and the other in jail.http://theyservepopcorninhell.blogspot.com/