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Just what I expected

Just perfect...

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I will win first place in America & all over the Globe viewing this movie more than any other person on Earth. First saw movie in small theatre I'm Milford Mass. Have seen movie over 1300 times since that day way in Milford Soo many times. At 66 years it is my obsession. Love it too death. God bless Hayley Mills.

Oh-me! Oh-my! Kids of super-rich parents sure do have it tough.Yep. They sure do - Especially when mommie-dearest and daddie-dearest have been divorced for 13 years and at this point these 2 ever-loving little brats (out of their own selfish interest) take it upon themselves to seriously meddle into the personal affairs of these adults, going to the most extreme lengths imaginable to bring good, ol' mom and dad back together again.This film's story deals (in a fairly flaky fashion) with the antics of a pair of identical twins. And, I, for one, found it absolutely impossible to believe that when Susan and Sharon were separated shortly after birth that their parents (getting divorced from each other at the time, with each parent taking only one of the girls for themselves) never, ever told that child about the respective twin sister that they had.I mean - Like, c'mon - How frickin' mean, nasty and petty can 2 divorcing parents get? Eh? For the most part The Parent Trap's story (a misguided mix of slapstick and sophistication) just didn't work very well. From my perspective (as a thinking adult), I quickly found the story-line to be far too contrived, far too short on laughs, and far too full of gaping plot holes to be worth any more than a dismal 4-star rating.

It is hard to see or discuss the 61 version without comparing it to the second version with Lindsay Lohan that came almost 40 years later.So let's do this in reverse and start with the later version (although if you have seen neither, I advise you start with the earlier one.) The second version is a polished gem, about as slick as it gets, and while the supporting cast is solid, that film is 99% about Lohan and how cute she is. In other words, a star turn.This film is not so clearcut. At first you think it is about Mills (who, typical of the era, never provides any sort of backstory for her clearly Brit accent) but, as the film progresses, you suddenly realize that Mills is merely part of a larger ensemble cast.An ensemble cast that includes Brian Keith (about as stereotyped as a "dad" you can find in that era) and Maureen O'Hara.O'Hara, on closer examination, is not merely the "mother" in the piece, she is the star. She lights up all her scenes in a way that is obvious only when you consider the scenes she does not appear in.When the film takes a bold run at pure situation comedy (about the halfway point) it is O'Hara that makes that work, too.In short, this is a film which is neither as perfect nor as polished as its successor, but still has an awful lot to offer.Recommended.

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/