The Idential - Review

The Identical

D: Dustin Marcellino

W: Howard Klauser

S: Seth Green, Ashley Judd, Joe Pantoliano, Blake Ryan, Ray Liotta

Well it's about time the King of Rock 'n' Roll got his own movie. I mean, he's had a couple of mini series about him but he's never had a... wait, what? This isn't an Elvis movie? The musician in this movie is named Drexel Hemsley and his long lost twin brother Ryan? But they look and sound exactly like Elvis? Um.... okay. 

So, this movie isn't about Elvis Presley but at the same time it basically is. The movie is about a pair of identical twin brothers (both portrayed by Blake Ryan) who are born to a poor family during the great depression. The parents feel like they are unable to take care of both of them and so they give one of them to a reverend (Ray Liotta) and his wife (Ashley Judd). The latter grows up completely unaware of where he came from, while the other grows up to become a famous rock musician... who looks and sounds exactly like Elvis.

This is such a bizarre movie. This movie features nearly every cliche of a rock star biography movie except this isn't about an actual rock star (I'm probably sounding like a broken record right now). Nearly every cliche in this movie was made fun of in the movie Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007, dir. Jake Kasdan), one of the few parody movies that actually parodies a movie genre. You've got the tragic childhood, the disapproving father, the religious people seeing it as the devil's music and so on. The only cliche it doesn't have is that the main character, Ryan, doesn't drink or smoke or do drugs or... anything for that matter. 

This film is kind of hard to talk about in a cohesively written way, so I'll just state the few positives it has. The soundtrack isn't that bad and some of the performances are pretty decent. Though I'm still baffled as to why Seth Green is in this movie. 

Check out Brad Jones's review of the film if you want to hear similar thoughts on the film but in a more comedic fashion. Also just check out Brad Jones's stuff he's awesome. CinemaSnob.com/Midnight Screening-The Identical.

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