The Parent Trap 2-Movie Collection
Picture: C+/C
Sound: B-/C+ Extras: B Films: B-/C
Walt Disney had a better run of early live-action films
than he is often given credit for and one of the most popular and liked is The
Parent Trap in 1961. This new
double DVD set offers the original, plus a 1986 TV movie sequel, but skips the
1989 second telefilm sequel. Hayley
Mills appears in all of them, charming and convincing as the twins in the first
film and the parent in the telefilm.
The original story is about two young ladies who meet at summer camp
(run by Nancy Culp & Ruth McDevitt) and eventually discover they are
sisters who did not know each other exist.
Their parents have not told them about each other, so they
plan to try and get them back together from their separation. That there is no anger, shock or outrage at
the lie is amazing, but children were supposed to be quite and conform then, I
guess. The film is over two hours and
is fine until it starts getting sappy and preoccupied in the reunification of
Brian Keith and Maureen O’Hara. Before
that melodrama, it is a fun, interesting, smart picture that offers some of the
studio’s best live action production while Walt still ruled the kingdom. The strangest thing writer/director David Swift
offers are visual moments not unlike Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958),
reflected in the score.
The sequel is a big disappointment, made when the studio
was on the comeback trail. Mills
returns as both twins, now adults, while we do not get new twins. We do get children who just seem to want to
play matchmaker. The girls are not bad,
but it is just a one-joke film that can only be an inadequate echo of the
original. Strangely, it was directed by
Ronald F. Maxwell, who was on his way to doing Gettysburg soon after.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on the first
film is not bad for its age, though it does not necessarily display the
beautiful color a three-strip Technicolor print like the ones the film was
originally issued in. From the stop-motion
animation in the opening to the various visual effects shots throughout, color
is consistent and the print is in nice shape.
The effects are not bad for their age either and have not been tampered
with or upgraded, which would have been annoying. There is still a lack of depth and some softness outside of
visual effects shots here and there, but a new dye-transfer print and some
touch-up restoration would work wonders for a digital HD release. The sequel’s 1.33 X 1 full frame image is
fuzzier and color poor by comparison, showing its limits. One wonders how if the third film looked
worse.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 remix on the original film is not
bad, with some surrounds and benefits particularly for the music and outdoor
scenes. The sequel has Dolby 2.0 that
is supposed to have Pro Logic surround, but it is so slight as to be
nonexistent. Early TV attempts at such
surround were usually substandard. All
the extras are on DVD 2, including a making-of featurette, Sherman Brothers
featurette, production archive, 1961 Disney Studio Album segment showing their
film output that year among other things, Lost Treasures: Who’s The Twin?
That shows the actress who worked with Mills to play Mills twin, Let’s Get
Together Music Video and a Production Archive with more. This includes the Disney Legend segment on
Mills, seven galleries, audio archives, Kimball & Swift: The Disney
Years segment, old black and white Title Makers TV segment from 1961
about the making of the film’s opening and closing stop motion, Seeing
Double featurette about doing that key visual effect and finally, a trailer
and TV Spot.
The original film is fine family entertainment, but the
extras on this set are surprisingly extensive and show how serious Disney is
about their live action classics. The
film was remake in 1998, but that is for another review. The Parent Trap 2-Movie Collection is
a decent surprise worth a look.
- Nicholas Sheffo
