[yasr_overall_rating]
Twin brothers are unknowingly separated at birth; one of them becomes an iconic rock ‘n’ roll star, while the other struggles to balance his love for music and pleasing his father.
The one thing I will give to the producers of “The Identical”, is courage. Musicals are a genre that typically don’t do very well, especially in today’s post 9/11 climate but in a year full of loud, extravagant superhero movies and bloated and headache-inducing 3D spectacles, “The Identical” comes out of nowhere and genuinely tries to tell a very simple and family-oriented story. The film begins in 1936 during the great depression where we are introduced to William and Helen Hemsley (Brian Geraghty and Amanda Crew) who have just given birth to twin boys, Dexter and Drexel. Unable to find work anywhere, the couple realize that they can’t afford to raise two boys and offer one of them to their local church evangelist Reece Wade (Ray Liotta) and his beautiful wife Louise (Ashley Judd), who are unable to have children of their own.
As the boys grow up, Reece is adamant that Dexter (named Ryan after his adoption) is meant to follow in his footsteps and enter the seminary but he has other plans. He loves music and can sing and dance and whenever he hears rock and roll, he just wants to be a part of it. Ryan’s sibling Drexel (both brothers are played by Blake Rayne) eventually goes on to become a huge rock and roll sensation, in the tradition of Elvis and sells millions of records and becomes a movie star and neither boy realizes that they are related, even though they are indistinguishable. Eventually, Ryan is hired to travel the country as ‘the identical’, singing and looking exactly like his famous brother and he knocks it out of the ballpark, making a name for himself and as he becomes famous in his own way, he tries writing his own music but nobody is interested, they just want to see and hear him performing Drexel’s songs.
Ryan becomes reclusive and realizes that he doesn’t know what he wants anymore and as he approaches a crossroads in his life, he must make a decision that will affect not just him but those near and dear to him too. The movie is filled with some great songs that were actually performed by Mr. Rayne himself who, if you close your eyes, you would swear you were listening to Elvis himself. The problem here is that the film is Mr. Rayne’s very first role and unfortunately, it shows. With no prior acting experience, he shares the screen with movie heavyweights Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd and Joe Pantoliano and sadly, he just doesn’t compare. During the dancing and singing segments, he excels but it’s during some of the film’s more emotive moments where he just falls down flat.
The other issue I had with the film is that never once, does anybody ever tell either brother, that they look and sound exactly like Elvis. They sing, move and play just like he did but that fact is never mentioned. During a drive-in segment with Ryan and his wife Jenny (Erin Cottrell), we see Drexel onscreen surrounded by girls in bikinis and surfboards, evocative of “Blue Hawaii” but again, nobody makes mention of this. The name Elvis is uttered once, briefly but I just found it so unbelievable that this aspect was never brought up by anybody. If the movie had been made in a sort of alternate universe, where Elvis never existed, I could have gone along with that story more than the one at hand. By the end of the film, everything is wrapped up nice and neat and what remnants of a great movie that could have been, are thrown out the window in favor of unrealistic and happy movie resolutions.
I so badly wanted to like “The Identical” more than I did and if it had been a story about the life of Elvis Presley, I’m sure I would have enjoyed it even more as Mr. Rayne looks, sounds and moves exactly like he did. I hope the film will find an audience and maybe with each movie Mr. Rayne makes, his acting abilities will improve because as it stands right now, regrettably, it’s his lack of experience that really hinders a film that could have been so much better had the central role been performed by a more accomplished and capable actor.
In theaters September 5th
