Twins (film)
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Twins | |
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Twins movie poster |
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Directed by | Ivan Reitman |
Produced by | Ivan Reitman |
Written by | William Davis William Osborne Timothy Harris Herschel Weingrod |
Starring | Arnold Schwarzenegger Danny DeVito Kelly Preston Chloe Webb Bonnie Bartlett |
Cinematography | Andrzej Bartkowiak |
Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date(s) | December 9, 1988 |
Running time | 105 min. |
Country | USA |
Language | English |
Budget | $15,000,000 USA (estimated) |
All Movie Guide profile | |
IMDb profile |
Twins is a 1988 comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman about unlikely twins (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito) that were separated at birth. The core of the film is the relationship between Devito's streetwise character and Arnie's Ingenue persona.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny De Vito, and Hulk Hogan have all revealed in interviews that Schwarzenegger and De Vito were given the option of doing this movie or Suburban Commando. Had the two done Surburban Commando, Hulk Hogan and Christopher Lloyd would have done this movie. Only Hogan and De Vito state that Vincent would have been hassled by horse racing bookies instead of loan sharks. The film is marketed with the tagline Only their mother can tell them apart.
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[edit] Plot summary
Julius and Vincent Benedict are fraternal twins; the results of a secret experiment carried out at a genetics laboratory to produce the perfect child, using sperm donated by six different fathers. The mother, Mary Ann was told that the children died at birth. Accepting this, she goes on to become a successful artist.
In fact, they both survived. Vincent was placed in an orphanage run by nuns in Los Angeles, California whilst Julius was taken to an unnamed South Pacific island and raised to become highly intelligent, physically very strong and spiritually pure. He was not told about his younger brother.
In Los Angeles, with no one but himself to rely on, Vincent escapes from the orphanage as soon as he is old enough and develops into the ultimate lowlife, involved in shady business deals and car theft and in debt to loan sharks. He is about to be killed by the loan sharks when he is arrested for unpaid parking fines.
Julius is told about his unknown brother, and comes to Los Angeles to look for him. Highly intelligent, but extremely naive about the real world his brother inhabits, he bails Vincent out of jail and meets his on-off-on girlfriend Linda Mason. Knowing little about women, he doesn't understand the flirtatious advances of her blonde sister Marnie, but eventually falls in love with her.
Using a stolen Cadillac that's carrying a secret prototype jet engine, which Vincent is delivering to a rival industrialist in Houston, Texas, the two couples go on a cross-country journey to track down the scientist who was in charge of the experiment, and pressure him to reveal the location of their mother. She lives at an artists' colony, but she doesn't believe their story and sends them packing.
Angry and disappointed, Vincent storms off and delivers the stolen property in return for five million dollars. Julius saves him from being killed by Webster, the real contract delivery man, who has tracked them down.
They return the money (the "four million dollars", suggesting they (or at least Vincent) skimmed a million off), marry the sisters, and use the $50,000 reward money to start up a legitimate consulting business ("Like the RAND corporation... only smarter!"), utilizing Julius' knowledge and Vincent's questionable business savvy. As a result of the publicity, their mother tracks them down and they are tearfully reunited. In the end, both brothers end up having pairs of twins with their respective wives.
[edit] Main cast
- Arnold Schwarzenegger - Julius Benedict
- Danny DeVito - Vincent Benedict
- Kelly Preston - Marnie Mason
- Chloe Webb - Linda Mason
- Bonnie Bartlett - Mary Ann Benedict
- David Caruso - Al Greco
- Trey Wilson - Donald "Beetroot" McKinley
- Marshall Bell - Mr. Webster
- Tony Jay - Professor Werner
- Nehemiah Persoff - Professor Mitchell Traven
- Maury Chaykin - Burt Klane
- Erik Kiser - Baby Twin #1
- Kyle Kiser - Baby Twin #2
- Nicolette Larson - as Singer
- Jeff Beck - plays guitar in the house band
[edit] Trivia
- Jeff Beck makes a cameo as the guitar player in a bar.
- Danny DeVito was a producer for Pulp Fiction, whose protagonists had the same first names as this film's protagonists.
- This is Arnold Schwarzenegger's first comedy in a starring role.
[edit] External links
- Twins at the Internet Movie Database
- Twins at Rotten Tomatoes