The Boston Phoenix
Review from issue: December 10 - 17, 1998

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2 stars and a half

The Parent Trap

(Buena Vista)

For this update of Disney's 1961 Hayley Mills taffy pull, first-time director Nancy Meyers preserves the whimsical split-screen hokum of the original, casting 11-year-old Lindsay Lohan as twins Annie and Hallie, who don't meet until their divorced parents send them to summer camp, then switch places in an attempt to reunite their British dress-designer mother (Natasha Richardson) and Californian vintner father (Dennis Quaid). Newcomer Lohan, a freckle-faced redhead, nails a crisp British accent for proper Annie, then shifts into American slang for tomboy Hallie. Natasha Richardson is sophisticated yet softly maternal; Dennis Quaid is sexy in a crinkle-eyed kind of way.
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