Thursday, September 18, 2014

A Look Back at the Olsen Twins Movies


During and after their time on Full House, Mary Kate and Ashley made a video series or two as well as a bunch of movies and a couple other TV series. Some were good, some were not so good, but either way there are a few that I think stood out above the rest. MikeJ has been reviewing these lately, but I first posted this long ago, so I'm not ripping him off.
1. It Takes Two was better than The Parent Trap, IMO, because Mary Kate and Ashley really are twins whereas Lindsay Lohan did split-screen (not saying she couldn't act, since playing two roles makes it a lot tougher, but it's better with real twins). The movie was also advertised with the song of the same name sung by Tina Turner and Rod Stewart.
2. How the West was Fun featured Martin Mull as the antagonist, which is usually a good time (my points of reference being his roles in Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Clue). While I don't like country or westerns that much, this one was pretty enjoyable even if the plot was somewhat trite and predictable.
3. Double Double Toil and Trouble was probably one of my favorite Halloween movies when I was a kid. It was the one I watched more often than Hocus Pocus or the Halloweentown movies and never once got tired of. I haven't seen it in a while, The Nightmare Before Christmas having cemented itself as one of my favorite holiday movies of all time (lists to come), but if I could dig it up again I'd still watch it today.
4. Two of a Kind was the sitcom they did after Full House, and although it didn't enjoy the same notoriety as the first show (let alone the run it had), I really liked it. Being only a year younger than them, Full House was what I watched in elementary school and this is what I watched in middle school (until it got cancelled). There were even novelizations of some episodes that I used to read all the time. It was that good. Again, if you can, I'd look it up.
5. Passport to Paris wasn't that good of a movie, but it had some good moments, such as the dinner scene where they make their speach about the environment and the quality of French water. It's one of their romantic comedies that takes place in a foreign country (there's at least one other), so antics abound. Sometimes it works, but other times it really doesn't.
6. Switching Goals was a movie about the pecking order of soccer teams and the emphasis placed on skill and winning. Some parts were corny, but overall it has a solid premise. It's a token sports movie, but it's tolerable. Kathy Greenwood of Whose Line Is It Anyway? played their mother!
7. Our Lips Are Sealed is that other romantic comedy in a foreign country I was talking about, except this time the premise is a little different because they're in the Witness Protection Program and keep blabbing about it (either accidentally or on purpose - as with North there's no love for the Amish) until they are finally sent to Australia. I must apologize to my Australian friends. Remember when Kat first appeared on Power Rangers and someone gave a compliment about her "lovely accent"? This is still when Americans thought Australians were exotic. Again, my apologies.
8. When in Rome was the last one I saw, mostly because I was growing out of the fandom by this point. Notably, Archie Kao who played the Blue Ranger in Power Rangers Lost Galaxy appears in it, with as much luck as others who have done other movies or television shows and may or may not have been typecast as their Ranger personas (Sally Martin in Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior is perhaps the most obvious and most recent, but she's far from being the only one).

No comments:

Post a Comment