THE PARENT TRAP

• Starring Lindsay Lohan, Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson
• Directed by Nancy Meyer
• Rated PG, with profanity; running time 124 minutes
• With 10 as a must see, Jack gives this film a rating of 7

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(July 30, 1998) -- Who knows if they'll ever build a better mouse trap. But, at least, somebody has made a better Parent Trap.

The original Parent Trap was made by Disney in 1961 as a modest, journeyman production, boosted by a breakthrough performance from Hayley Mills as twin 14-year-old sisters who scheme to reunite their divorced parents, played by Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith.

The 1998 version takes the same basic plot, but assembles it in a much more stylish package. Mildly amusing entertainment has become a class act.

The Parent Trap has been refashioned by director Nancy Meyers and her producing partner, Charles Shyer, the Private Benjamin team who brought a high gloss to the 1991 Father of the Bride.

Meyers and Shyer also have discovered a new young charmer in 11-year-old Lindsay Lohan, who plays the challenging roles. (Since 14-year-old girls are far more worldly in 1998 than they were in 1961, here they're 11.)

Lohan handles both roles with aplomb -- Hallie, the easy-going California girl who lives with her father, Nick (Dennis Quaid), on a Napa Valley vineyard, and the more uptight British girl, Annie, who lives with her fashion-designing mother, Elizabeth (Natasha Richardson), in a tony London townhouse.

As in the first film, the sisters were separated as infants as part of the divorce settlement. Each girl knows nothing of the other -- until they bump into each other at a summer camp.

They begin to explore each other's lives and hatch a plan: They'll switch identities and swap parents. Once the switch is discovered, it'll simply be an excuse to get the parents back together.

Quaid and Richardson are well-cast as the once-great lovers who now have separate lives.

Everyone can see a chemistry between them, despite their denials.

Richardson's character is the most updated from the first film. The O'Hara character went back to live with her own, rather oppressive mother and sweet father in Boston. This Elizabeth is an independent and talented woman living in London.

Although the new Parent Trap is an improvement, it doesn't solve all the problems. Both versions become clumsy near the end, especially in a long, slapstick sequence when the twins and Nick take his conniving fiancee, Meredith (Elaine Hendrix), on a camping trip.

When viewers got two versions of Mills for the price of one in 1961, the twinning special effects were eye-openers. Today, such stunts are commonplace -- though they are superbly crafted here.

Now we recognize that a young girl's talent is behind our belief in two girls on the screen. It was true of Mills and it's true ofthe fresh-faced, red-haired Lohan.