For me, seeing The Parent Trap was a moral imperative. You do not force a room full of four-year-olds to watch a 30-year-old movie, then deny them the right to torture you with the remake.

It was... cute. I reserve any other adjectives on the grounds that they may be above a fifth grade reading level.

Was it better than the original? I'm sorry, but I'd rather French kiss my pet ferret than say that Lindsay Lohan (the actress playing the twins in the remake) could kick Hayley Mills's rear end in a celebrity grudge match. I'm betting it would take all of three girlie slaps before little Lindsay goes down for the count.

OK, here's the drill on the rest of the movie. The twins meet at camp, hate each other at first sight. Then, after a series of pranks that are really just excuses for some wholesome trespassing and breaking and entering, the girls discover who they are. They proceed to turn each other into... well, themselves. Think you're confused? After this movie -- one girl playing two characters occasionally playing each other -- Lindsay Lohan is going to be the new poster girl for schizophrenia.

They go on to a.) illegally leave the country in one instance, and b.) illegally stay in the country in another. As if that weren't bad enough, they defraud their parents by switching identities! The little brats! Half the stuff they do in this movie could get them a good decade in the state pen if they were over 21!

Oh, yeah, the love story... Natasha Richardson walks around for two hours having the nerve to look eerily like my mom, and Dennis Quaid goes everywhere in tight jeans followed by his blond bimbette of a fiancee. (If nothing else, the fact that this bimbette's mom is played by the bimbette from the original movie is a kick.)

But who cares about their romance? Sorry, but I'd rather watch the butler (Simon Kunz) and the housekeeper (Lisa Ann Walters) in this movie any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. I gotta love a pasty, tall, bald English guy who wears a Speedo and thinks he can get away with it.

And the housekeeper is hysterical, not to mention that because of her, I'm now really tempted to try chili and cornbread. Heck, I never even knew you could put the two together... sort of like pretzels and caramel dip. (Trust me, you really don't want to know.)

Jennifer Matarese

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