In this issue...
My husband ruined The Parent Trap
Coaching corner
What I’m watching
My Husband Ruined The Parent Trap
Given the age gap between my twins and their little sister, agreeing on what to watch for family movie night is never easy. This movie is too babyish for the teenagers. That one is too mature for the 9 year old. And that other one will make my eyes bleed if I have to watch it one more time.
Somehow though, everyone seems to agree on The Parent Trap, (the 1961 version, starring Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills, thank you very much). Everyone, that is, except my husband, who is the only person in the house not to have grown up watching this classic. He also doesn’t understand the concept of comfort movies, despite years of our attempts to explain the appeal.
“But you already know what’s going to happen!” went his weak justification for absolute lunacy as we fired up Disney Plus one night, scrolling to the familiar movie title.
“Exactly!” we answered. “How else are you going to memorize every line and master the delivery?”
He shook his head and sighed. This movie night was already going off the rails. We needed to get this thing going quickly, before he started questioning TNT’s long-running tradition of playing A Christmas Story on a loop for 24 hours.
We all settled in as Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands belted out the opening sequence, and soon enough the familiar Camp Inch came into view.
“The whole premise makes no sense,” chuckled my husband, uncharacteristically unable to let go. Grudges tend to be my territory, but not tonight.
“What are you talking about? They meet at camp! They’re long-lost sisters on a mission to reunite their family! Hilarity ensues- it’s cute!” I retorted.
“Mmm hmmm… and why do they have to be reunited?”
“Because the parents split up,” I calmly explained. Hadn’t this guy heard of divorce? If he kept this up much longer he was going to!
“Yeah,” piped up the 9 year old. “They got divorced when Sharon and Susan were babies, and each parent took one of them.”
“And… they decided the best solution was to never see their own kid again, never mention to “their” twin that she had a sister- or parent- and generally pretend like this was all normal,” I said, realization dawning on me.
“Yeah, and a judge would’ve had to look over the arrangement and be like ‘Everything appears in order here. I’m totally fine with this,’” put in one of the 14 year olds. (I forget their name. I’d long ago signed one of them over to my husband and kept the other one as my own.)
Now look, I’m not going to tell you this was the first problematic thing I’d spotted in The Parent Trap; it’s chock full of messed up stuff. (Did I mention it’s a family favorite going back three generations? This probably explains a lot.)
I am, however, saying that up until that point, I’d given the good folks at Disney a lot in the suspension of disbelief department- a precious gift which I now saw they had squandered.
We continued watching the movie, but all I could see were wildly unrealistic scenarios.
Was I now to believe that Susan, with no cosmetic training whatsoever, was able to cut Sharon’s hair with such precision that it matched her own haircut exactly?
Did no one in Boston ever once question Sharon’s full-on British accent? In Boston?
Is it realistic to think Maureen O’Hara would really have stepped off a transcontinental flight in full makeup and hair, looking like…well, Maureen O’Fracking Hara?
As a child I’d always duly hated Vicky, the father’s jilted fiancé, but suddenly I began to have sympathy for her. Sure, she was an unapologetic gold digger, but why shouldn’t be mad about her guy going off on a cozy family camping trip with his ex-wife?
On another day, this slow unraveling of a childhood illusion might have ruined the movie for me, but it didn’t that night. We continued watching, pointing out things and laughing. It was our own strange kind of Easter egg hunt. But instead of our comments feeling like ridicule, they came from a place of affection, like watching a beloved puppy fall over its own paws as it learned to run.
We all loved The Parent Trap, and no amount of far-fetched or outdated concepts could change that. We loved the movie in spite of those things, and in some strange way, because of them. Because of the way it brought us together to laugh over them, or cringe, or shake our heads.
By the time Hayley Mills- or was it Hayley Mills?- badly pretended to play the guitar as she sang “Let’s Get Together” towards the end of the movie, I’d gotten over my initial frustration with Disney and my husband. The Parent Trap was a mess, but weren’t we all?
Coaching Corner: Your inner critic isn’t all bad!
What I’m Watching: FEUD: Capote vs. The Swans
Naomi Watts. Diane Lane. Molly Ringwald. Plus a whole slew of other incredible actresses who *gasp* aren’t 25 years old! Need I say more? (Oh yeah, Demi Moore is in it, too!)
FX’s FEUD: Capote vs. The Swans is nothing short of addictive. With witty banter, scandalous peeks into the lives of the New York elite, and a slow-motion unfolding of the rise and fall of Truman Capote, there’s a lot to love here. Episodes come out each Thursday, which somehow makes the whole thing more delectable, like getting a sinful little nibble of very dark chocolate instead of grabbing the whole box at once.
And can we talk about how insanely good Tom Hollander in this role? The man is Capote reincarnated! Cut to the chase and give him the Golden Globe now.
My kids have somehow not scene the parent trap yet and I need to change that! Appreciate the Feud rec too. Going to check it out!