The Parent Trap (1998 film)



The 1998 remake of Disney's classic 1961 film The Parent Trap, starring a (surprisingly brilliant) pre-insanity Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid, and the late, marvelous Natasha Richardson.

Twin sisters have been separated nearly at birth when their parents divorced. The year their father is considering remarrying, the sisters meet each other at summer camp. After meeting and figuring out their actual realationship, they plot to get their parents back together, a plot that involves each pretending to be the other. Hilarity Ensues.

The movie is based on a book, Das Doppelte Lottchen.

"Elizabeth: (to Annie) You're not to worry, okay? (cut) I'm sorry! I can't handle this!"
 * Abbey Road Crossing: A second-long freeze frame as "Here Comes The Sun" plays in the background.
 * Adaptation Expansion: The original movie ended when Mitch and Maggie fell back in love.
 * Always Identical Twins
 * Bad to the Bone: The Trope Namer plays at the start of the poker game.
 * Big Eater: Hallie, but not Annie.
 * Bilingual Bonus: Annie takes news of her father remarrying so harshly, she rants in French.
 * Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The soon-to-be-Step-Mom for Hallie.
 * Book Ends: As part of Alan Silvestri's score, short, dramatic instrumentals of "Let's get together, yeah, yeah, yeah," accompany both the opening Walt Disney Pictures logo and the last few seconds of the end credits.
 * British Stuffiness: One of the twins is American and the other is British. Guess which is the proper one and which is the spunky one (at least initially).
 * Butt Monkey: The fiancee, Meredith.
 * Disneyfication: The original story was far more serious than the Disney movies -- the father was distant, the mother was a wreck, and one twin falls ill.
 * The Ditz: Both Marvas are quite bubble brained.
 * Divorce Is Temporary: The twins actively invoke this.
 * Don't Split Us Up
 * Escalating War: The prank war between the twins.
 * Evil-Detecting Dog: Annie isn't exactly evil, but Hallie's dog Sammy still figures out that she's an impostor much quicker than her father and Chessy do, and (in a straighter example) barks at Meredith in the hotel.
 * First Father Wins
 * Foreign Language Tirade: As noted under Bilingual Bonus.
 * Fourth Date Marriage: Elizabeth and Nick, both times.
 * Gilligan Cut:

"Why don't you stop and look me over.. Am I the same girl you used to know?"
 * Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: The Strip Poker payoff at camp.
 * Guess Who I'm Marrying
 * Hideous Hangover Cure: Elizabeth panicked during the flight and drank everything in sight, so this was necessary.
 * Hilarity Ensues
 * Hot Mom: Natasha Richardson.
 * I'm a Man, I Can't Help It: Nick Parker. Annie lampshades this.
 * Ice Queen: Meredith, and proud of it.
 * Identical Twin ID Tags
 * Info Dump: For everyone who is involved in the main plot.
 * Intoxication Ensues: Elizabeth may not drink much, but she's a total lightweight.
 * It Tastes Like Feet: The bartender's Hideous Hangover Cure tastes and looks like tar.
 * It's a Small World After All: Lampshaded.
 * Little Black Dress: Martin, Elizabeth's butler and friend, suggests she take one on the trip to see Nick and switch the girls back.
 * The Magic Poker Equation
 * Montage: At the end of the movie, Elizabeth and Nick remarry, Martin proposes to Chessy, and Chessy says yes.
 * Musical Gag: When Hallie-as-Annie does the "secret handshake" with Martin, the music playing is the opening to "Am I The Same Girl" by Dusty Springfield.  Part of lyrics of that song are

"Up to your room. Now."
 * The music playing as the girls are marched to the isolation cabin comes from The Great Escape.
 * Mythology Gag: A few sentences from the "Let's Get Together" song (made famous in the Hayley Mills version) are hummed/spoken by Lindsay Lohan at several points. It's also incorporated into the score as the first and last few bars of music heard in the movie.
 * The actress playing the Gold Digger's mother in this version was the Gold Digger in the 1961 version -- and both characters are named "Vicki".
 * Meredith is heard talking on the cell phone to a "Reverend Mosby," a character from the 1961 film.
 * The name of the hotel, The Stafford, is a reference to the name of a boy in the 1961 film who Susan is talking to at the camp dance, when the back of her dress was cut off by Sharon.
 * Nice to the Waiter: Chessy and Martin are like family to their respective employers. Averted with Meredith who treats Chessy like a talking dog who would be summoned with a bell.
 * No Sympathy: In the 1961 version, one of the twins gets in trouble for having a messy cabin, even though it had obviously been sabotaged by pranksters. In this version it makes more sense, with the cabin sabotage being the climax of the prank war that gets them both in trouble.
 * Now You Tell Me: A lot of characters find things out the hard way.
 * Off to Boarding School: What would have happened to Hallie (and later Annie, too) if Meredith married Nick.
 * Old Man Marrying a Child: Used as an indirect accusation, delivered with Sugary Malice. When Nick tells his daughter that Meredith is about to become part of the family, she surely understands right away that he's talking about marriage. However, she pretends to innocently misunderstand him and get all ecstatic about how he's finally getting one more daughter by adopting her.
 * One True Pairing: Established in-universe, between Elizabeth James and Nick Parker -- the daughters' reason for the trap.
 * Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Happens to both Hallie and Annie, more often to whoever has a British accent at the moment. Often it's the In-Character version of the trope. Lohan had to play four accents -- American, British, American pretending to be British, and British pretending to be American. The latter two had accents slipping.
 * And Lohan does a remarkable job in the scene at the hotel where she's basically playing four characters at once -- Hallie, Annie, Hallie pretending to be Annie and Annie pretending to be Hallie. She switches up the accents just enough to do exactly what Hallie and Annie were after (confuse the heck out of Mom and Dad).
 * Parent with New Paramour
 * Parents Know Their Children: Sort of -- the father looks each twin in the eye and declares which one is Hallie; however, it's not made clear if he's right, since the twins keep playing up the charade and make him question his own judgment.
 * Pet Homosexual: Meredith's sassy gay assistant: "Ooh, Ice Woman!"
 * Reassigned to Antarctica: Meredith said multiple times that as soon as she married Nick, she was shipping the kids far, far away (once she said Timbuktu, another time she said school in Switzerland).
 * Reciprocal Real Person Cameo: Hallie and Annie were named after the daughters of director Nancy Meyers and producer Charles Shyer -- Annie Meyers-Shyer and Hallie Meyers-Shyer, both of whom have bit parts in the film. Hallie Meyers-Shyer is playing a character named "Lindsay".
 * Remake Cameo: Joanna Barnes played Vicki Robinson (the fiancee) in the Hayley Mills version and Vicki Blake (the fiancee's mother) in the Lindsay Lohan version.
 * The Reveal: In-universe, several times: first Hallie and Annie to each other (twice), then Annie to Chessy, then Hallie to her grandfather, then Hallie to her mother. And then Elizabeth dealing with the additional reveal of Nick's engagement to Meredith.
 * Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Elizabeth is getting emotional about the thought of meeting Nick for the first time after so many years, she spouts off several of these to Martin.
 * Rich Bitch: Meredith Blake, who was also the Gold Digger and the Child-Hater.
 * Rich in Dollars, Poor In Sense: Nick.
 * Sand in My Eyes: Elizabeth is pleased that Nick still remembers the wine from their first wedding.
 * Scream Discretion Shot: When Hallie pierces Annie's ears, and when the girls drag Annie's mattress into a lake.
 * Servile Snarker: Nick's housekeeper, Chessy, and Elizabeth's butler, Martin. They also become attracted to each other at first sight and end up being the Beta Couple.
 * Separated at Birth
 * Shout-Out:
 * The name "Meredith Blake" is a reference to a male character in "Five Little Pigs", a story written by Agatha Christie.
 * Meredith is called "Cruella DeVil" several times.
 * "The man went completely ashen, like I was the bloody Ghost of Christmas Past!"
 * Nick's reaction on seeing Elizabeth for the first time in eleven years -- leaning over to keep watching her around a closing elevator door -- copies a similar moment with James Garner in the 1963 film Move Over, Darling.
 * The Kulps (the women who run the girls' camp) are named for actress Nancy Kulp (probably best known as Miss Jane Hathaway on The Beverly Hillbillies), who played the role of the younger camp leader in the 1961 film.
 * When Hallie calls Annie from London, she tells Elizabeth that she's talking to a friend from camp named "Mildred Plotka".  This was the real name of the character played by Carole Lombard the 1934 film Twentieth Century.
 * "Shut Up" Kiss
 * Sibling Team: Once the girls discover they're sisters.
 * Solomon Divorce: One of the best-known examples.
 * Sword Fight: Hallie and Annie's first meeting is through an absurdly over-the-top "fencing match" at camp. The girls have fencing masks on as a way to save on special effects, to cover the faces of the stunt people, and for the big reveal that they both look alike when they take the masks off and face each other.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: Londoner Annie as the girly-girl to laid-back Californian Hallie.
 * Training Montage: As Hallie and Annie teach each other how to impersonate themselves.
 * Twin Switch
 * Villainous Breakdown: Meredith has one after being pranked by the twins and Nick dumps her.
 * You Are Grounded: After the girls scare Meredith off.


 * Zany Scheme