Review: M. Night Shyamalan's "Trap" is a B-Movie and there is No Shame in that

by Cláudio Alves

Over the past 25 years, M. Night Shyamalan has built his reputation on twisty tales that sting with some nasty surprise before the end credits roll. Depending on the picture and the public's willingness to accept the director's oddities, his strategy has resulted in a handful of triumphs, a slew of mediocrities, and a couple of outright disasters. Going into Trap, one expects much of the same, but, in the biggest twist of all, Shyamalan has presented his audience with a fairly straightforward affair. The premise is simple, if ludicrous, the tone is sincere, and, for once, you feel the filmmaker's focus on entertaining rather than pulling the rug from under the viewer. M. Night Shyamalan's Trap is a B-movie that makes no apology about its ambitions or lack thereof…

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Best Shot: The Parent Trap (1961)

The weirdest thing happened to me this week. My life and plans were entirely thrown off when I discovered I had an identical twin in... no, no. That's what's happened to Hayley Mills. I have no such excuse other than that life has proven very complicated lately. I will. will. will. return to former blogging glory soon. Until then... please enjoy these fine articles on my favorite movie when I was a wee thing, Disney's The Parent Trap (1961)

The Entertainment Junkie
Jason Henson writes...

Running parallel to the twins' attempts to mend their broken family is an examination of why it fell apart in the first place. It's here that, for a family film, The Parent Trap entertains some complex ideas about marriage...

Film Actually
Shane Slater chose the same scene and writes...

Maureen O'Hara's Maggie is indeed the most fascinating character in "The Parent Trap"

and how's this for crazy...

Rachel Wagner chose the exact same scene (albeit a different image) to focus on in her write up. That's all three Best Shot partygoers this week. 

My dvd is faulty so I'm delayed but I will get to it because I've been eager to rewatch.

P.S. Rachel was also the sole person to bravely join me in looking back at the Wonder Woman TV show last week, so you can see her take on that as well as thoughts on the new Wonder Woman movie.

On this day: Grace Kelly became a Princess, Madonna's "Live to Tell" and more...

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz!

1907 Composer Miklós Rózsa born in Budapest. He becomes an Academy favorite in the early 40s and is nominated 17 times for his music with 3 Oscar wins (Spellbound, A Double Life, Ben-Hur) 

1922 Emmy winner Barbara Hale (Perry Mason) born in Illinois

⇱ 1946 Hayley Mills born in London. She becomes the very last winner of the special "juvenile Oscar winner" for Pollyanna (1960) and chases it with the classic twin comedy The Parent Trap (1961). Did you know she was TFE's favorite classic child star? Now you do.

1947 James Woods born in Vernal, Utah

1953 Rick Moranis born in Toronto. Today's movie fans probably don't know this but in '89 he starred in 3 consecutive $100 million grossers in one single summer (Ghostbusters II, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Parenthood) and it was a very big deal because back then the same people weren't in every movie. TFE's theory is that casting is divided into two eras, pre Samuel L Jackson and after. After Samuel L Jackson (ASLL) it's mandatory to only have excessively familiar faces in every franchise, and it's even okay if they're competing franchises or the same franchises with different roles. It's madness! 

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Women's Pictures - Ida Lupino's The Trouble With Angels

“The sex of a director doesn’t mean a hoot. The one all-important thing is talent. Somehow it has evolved that directing is a man’s profession. A woman has a tough, almost impossible time breaking down this case barrier. Miss Arzner managed it. Ida is doing it now.”

When Rosalind Russell said this to reporters on the set of The Trouble With Angels, neither she nor Ida Lupino could have predicted that this would actually be Ida’s last film. So how exactly did a writer/director who’d made her name on small budget social message pictures end up directing a Hayley Mills comedy co-starring Rosalind Russell as a mother superior? And who could have predicted that a noir director could do comedy?

When Ida Lupino’s production company The Filmmakers shuttered its windows in the mid-1950s, Lupino moved to the burgeoning world of television to continue directing. Then (as now), TV was a much more open to female creators, and so Lupino flourished. She directed in a variety of genres, from comedy (Gilligan’s Island) to thriller (Alfred Hitchcock Presents) to Westerns (Have Gun - Will Travel). In many ways, Lupino was already the ideal television director. TV shows were shot quickly, on a budget, and often on location - just like Lupino’s early pictures. What Lupino got from TV - besides creative control and consistent work - was a chance to expand and diversify her previously narrow (but successful) body of work. And all that new experience helped when her friend William Frye handed her the script to a Catholic schoolgirl comedy in early 1965.

Hijinks and nunsense after the jump.

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The Honoraries: Maureen O'Hara in "The Parent Trap" (1961)

Welcome to "The Honoraries". From now until November 8th when the Governor's Awards are held, we'll be celebrating the careers of the three Honorary Oscar recipients of 2014 (Maureen O'Hara, Hayao Miyazaki, Claude Carriere) and the Jean Hersholt winner (Harry Belafonte). Here's Abstew...

Maureen O'Hara's impressive body of work includes a Best Picture winner (1941's How Green Was My Valley), a perennial Holiday favorite (1947's Miracle on 34th Street), even an early film with Hitchcock (1939's Jamacia Inn). No offense to those classics but the greatest film the star ever appeared in has to be that Disney masterpiece about a pair of long-lost twins trying to reunite their parents in The Parent Trap.

It was my first encounter with The Queen of Technicolor and although the appeal of twice the juvenile star wattage of teenage Brit Hayley Mills was the main selling point as a child, there was always something special about O'Hara as their mother, Margaret McKendrick. Even before she finally appears a half an hour into the movie, the film has already built her up as a glamorous and intriguing figure. Susan (Hayley Mills as tomboy) talks about how she used to stare at her picture and how fabulous ("Absolutely fabulous") her mother was. And the word Sharon (proper, upper-crust Hayley Mills) uses to describe her is divine, both adjectives usually reserved to describe bedazzled drag queens lip-syncing for their lives. But once Sharon reveals the beauty shot of her mother, there was no doubt in my young mind that that was a movie star. [More...]

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