The Parent Trap (1961)

Good movie but grossly overrated

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Blistering performances.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The biggest hurdle with this story is buying the conceit that these two adults would've made the decision to separate these twins in the first place. Otherwise, it's just delightful. Almost beat-for-beat identical to the likable 90s remake, only better because the humor doesn't project as much; it lets the audience work a bit more. Effectively funny and fairly moving, it's classic family entertainment with a great anchoring performance by Mills at the center.

The darling Hayley Mills plays twin sisters in the original The Parent Trap! Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith get divorced when the girls are babies, and in a bizarre custody settlement, the twins are split up between the parents. Each girl grows up with only one parent and with no knowledge of their twin's existence. Until summer camp. . . Hayley and Hayley notice a slight resemblance and put the pieces together. Then, to play a trick on their parents and, well, trap them into getting remarried, the girls switch places! In true Disney fashion, the pranks are pretty harmless and sweet, and the Maureen and Brian catch onto their kids' plans. But in true Disney fashion, the story manages to capture your heart anyway.I grew up watching the remake, so I think one's preference depends on the generation. The 1961 version is cute, but I remember seeing the 1998 version in the theaters, and it'll always be my favorite. If you didn't grow up in the nineties, you might like the sixties one better, so give it a whirl and see which one you like!

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.

There isn't much here that is new. We have a woman (who isn't a bad woman) invading the space of a couple of teenagers who are out to keep her away from their father. Hailey Mills plays both the girls (twins) with their tight curly blonde hair. They can barely carry a tune but they sing anyway, and that song has become part of the eternal movie culture. What happens is a series of tricks pulled on the unsuspecting woman (who really has no sense of humor so makes a good foil) to show that she and the dad have nothing in common. Some of what they do is downright cruel and mean spirited. I guess we enjoy it because we want the father to be happy too. Just a bit of fluff from the Disney studios.