![[IMAGE MAP]](/images/sidebar2.gif)
MULTIPLICITY
Mufti Splenetik
Written and directed by: Harold Ramis
Produced by: Boss Film Studios / Columbia Pictures Special Effects by: Boss Film Studios
Cast: Michael Keaton (Doug Kinney), Andie MacDowell (Laura Kinney), Harris Yulin (Dr. Leeds)
Theatres : Shaw
Runtime: 115 minutes
Rating : **1/2 out of *****Irrelevent fact: Michael Keaton looks like Tyne Daly. Has anyone noticed this? In MULTIPLICITY, Michael Keaton makes four "copies" of himself (the fourth not on purpose) and one of his clones, the "nurturing" one, looks exactly like Tyne Daly.
MULTIPLICITY isn't a very "big" film. It doesn't have exploding White Houses (like in INDEPENDENCE DAY), or apocalyptic visions of a future Los Angeles (ESCAPE FROM L.A.). It doesn't even have the layers of foam padding and well-plastered makeup we admire d so much in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, which in many ways is similar to MULTIPLICITY in its screen effects, and the way it uses the idea of "changing one's self" in order to examine and improve the quality of one's life.
What it does have is Michael Keaton (who looks like Tyne Daly), playing Doug Kinney, a worn-out, overworked contractor who has to deal with tardy employees, incompetence at work, and an overly hefty workload. At home, his relationship with his wife (Andie McDowell) is slowly souring because she wants to go back to work, but neither of them will have the time to take care of the children if she does this. "We don't need need a schedule, we need a miracle," she warns. Insert tense yet sad music as plot grad uates toward revealing the solution to all this craziness.
After a watery catastrophe at work involving several burst pipes, Doug meets the owner of the site he's working on, Dr Owen Leeds (Harris Yulin). Leeds offers to clone Doug as this would give the man more time to do everything he has to, and, gasp, time f or things he actually wants to do.
Doug eventually takes him up on this offer, and that's where the fun begins. Clone Number One leads Doug to make Number Two, and the clones themselves decide that a third roommate was needed to help them out a little.
Meanwhile, Doug succeeds in alienating himself from both his work and home lives because his clones are taking care of them, and his dream of taking time off for just himself materializes in a very different way from what he'd hoped. Hiding the clones fro m Laura becomes more and more difficult, and their relationship becomes rockier as she gets increasingly confused and put off by the different Dougs she spends time with at various times of the day.
The movie's ending is just as predictable as everything that has come so far, but MULTIPLICITY is a film worth watching for a number of reasons. The biggest is Michael Keaton, who argues, pleads, reasons and has enraged conversations with himself, himself , himself in seamless comic scenes that far outdo Eddie Murphy's showboating in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR. Unlike PROFESSOR, there is believable interaction between all the four characters that Keaton plays, and he was so convincing in carving out different per sonalities for each that the friend I'd watched it with insisted that Number Two and Three were *not* Michael Keaton at all.
Clone Number One is a super-macho persona representing the testoroney side of Doug's character. Number Two is the one who "nurtures," a character that Keaton renders with a slight comic effeminacy, and Three is a total washout, a "copy of a copy" with the brain patterns of a wet banana.
Unlike PROFESSOR, MULTIPLICITY is also more likeable, being less hammy, far less scatological, and more concerned with sticking to its storyline. It's also subtler. Like director Harold Ramis' other comic story GROUNDHOG DAY, which had the same dry, comic intensity, MULTIPLICITY is a sweet thingamajig about finding, and learning to live with oneself, well told and executed, and without a single parachuteless plane jump too.
The Flying Inkpot Rating System:
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
Other film reviews by this writer can be obtained from the InkVault by doing a key word search with this writer's name.Other film reviews by other writers can also be obtained from the InkVault through key word searches.
Explore the Flying Inkpot
They're Alive!
Concert Reviews
Bit deadish:
Other Resources at The Flying InkpotHome
