Twins (film)

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For the film starring Stan Laurel, see Twins (1925 film).
Twins

Twins movie poster
Directed by Ivan Reitman
Produced by Ivan Reitman
Written by William Davies &
William Osborne and
Timothy Harris &
Herschel Weingrod
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
Danny DeVito
Kelly Preston
Chloe Webb
Bonnie Bartlett
Tony Jay
Marshall Bell
Music by Georges Delerue
Randy Edelman
Frank Fitzpatrick (Supervising Music Editor)
Cinematography Andrzej Bartkowiak
Editing by Donn Cambern
Sheldon Kahn
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) December 9, 1988
Running time 105 min.
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Budget $15,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue $111,936,400 (USA)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Twins is a 1988 comedy film produced and directed by Ivan Reitman about unlikely twins (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito) who were separated at birth. The core of the film is the relationship between DeVito's streetwise character and Arnold's ingénue persona. The original music score was composed by Georges Delerue and Randy Edelman.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito, and Hulk Hogan have all revealed in interviews that Schwarzenegger and DeVito were given the option of doing this movie or Suburban Commando. Had DeVito and Schwarzenegger made Suburban Commando, Hulk Hogan and Christopher Lloyd would have made this movie. Only Hogan and DeVito 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."

Contents

[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 Benedict (who was thought to have died while giving birth to Vincent and Julius) was told that the children died at birth. Accepting this, she had gone on to become a successful artist.

In fact, the children 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 like a modern Doc Savage to become highly intelligent, physically very strong and spiritually pure. He learned to speak twelve languages, and excelled in mathematics, history, science and literature. He was not told about his younger brother until his 36th birthday.

In Los Angeles, with no-one but himself to rely on, Vincent escaped from the orphanage as soon as he was old enough and developed into the ultimate lowlife, involved in shady business deals and car theft and in debt to loan sharks. He is also a womanizer and a smart aleck with a very greedy lust for money. He is about to be beaten up 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 more worldly brother inhabits, he bails Vincent out of jail and meets Vincent's on-off-on girlfriend Linda Mason. Knowing little about women, Julius 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 fuel injector, 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, who they find out has founded an art colony. Visiting the colony, they're informed their mother died and leave. In reality, the woman who told them of the passing is in fact their mother, but she didn't believe the story, fearing they were land speculators. Little do they know that the real contract delivery man for the injector, a hitman known only as "The Webster", is tracking them. This man has the uncomfortable habit of killing the people who cross him in his business (including his contractors) once they have seen his face, in order to preserve his identity.

Angry and disappointed, Vincent storms off and delivers the stolen property in return for five million dollars. But as Vincent is about to return home with the money, the industrialist, Donald "Beetroot" McKinley, is shot and killed by the Webster. Julius saves him from being killed by the Webster, and they ultimately work together to defeat the hitman, killing him by releasing a heavy chain directly above his head.

They return the money (the "four million dollars", suggesting Vincent skimmed a million off despite Julius's insistence that they return the whole sum), 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's 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] Sequel Talk

After the movie made more money than expected, a possible sequel called Triplets was discussed. The plot revolved around the Benedict brothers discovering a lost triplet sister. Roseanne Arnold was considered for the role; as Roseanne was the #1 sitcom at this time. But, the movie never materialized.

[edit] Main cast

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Films directed by Ivan Reitman

Foxy Lady (1971) • Cannibal Girls (1973) • Meatballs (1979) • Stripes (1981) • Ghostbusters (1984) • Legal Eagles (1986) • Twins (1988) • Ghostbusters II (1989) • Kindergarten Cop (1990) • Dave (1993) • Junior (1994) • Fathers' Day (1997) • Six Days Seven Nights (1998) • Evolution (2001) • My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006)
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American films of the 1980s
1980 · 1981 · 1982 · 1983 · 1984 · 1985 · 1986 · 1987 · 1988 · 1989