Two Of a Kind. Movie reviews, Grease stars hit a skid
TWO OF A KIND (PG). A silly and sluggish movie about a young couple who must perform a great sacrifice for each other as a test of human faith, or else the Almighty plans to flood the world again. The film lacks divine guidance, among oth er things. John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John. At area theaters.
For the first time since they starred in the top-grossing movie musical, “Grease,” more than five years ago, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John are back together on the screen again, but this time they don’t sing a note or dance a step. Too bad.
If just a tiny portion of the chemistry that existed on screen between Travolta and Newton-John in “Grease” were evident in “Two of a Kind,” their new film might be guilty of merely suffering from a torpid screenplay. However, almost without exception, the movie looks as if it were cast by tossing the names of all the actors in a goldfish bowl and assign-ing roles at random.
We hear thunder, and a faceless booming voice upstairs expresses disenchantment with the shape of the world and threatens to unleash another 40 days of you-know-what. However, a team of guardian angels bickers for a brief reprise to show that earth folks aren’t so bad. They’ll turn up some redeeming traits, namely, self-sacrifice, in a pair of humans, Zack (Travolta), a self-centered young inventor of things like edible sunglasses, is chosen as an example to prove this. He’s about to have his ears sliced off by a pair of loan sharks, so he robs a bank in an effort to pay them off. The teller is Debbie (Newton-John), a larcenous but beautiful would-be actress. She foils his plans by taking the money herself and giving him a bag of useless pa-per, but she’s thoughtful enough to leave her phone number on the bag.
Expectedly, love blooms and self-sacrifice is just, well, just a few cliches away. But not until “Two of a Kind” meanders through nearly 90 minutes of utter-ly uninspired film making.
Travolta’s acting is so bad that in one scene, expressing alarm, his eyes widen and he looks like a silent screen actor for a moment. The best that can be said for Newton-John is that she manages to maintain a serious expression when necessary. Charles Durning, a fine actor, is hopelessly miscast as one of the guardian angels. And Oliver Reed, playing the devil, resembles a department store floorwalker with a sneer most of the time.
In one scene, involving a hansom cab, a horse utters a pained whinny, and Newton-John asks why he did it. At a critics’ screening of the movie, someone in the audience yelled out, “Because he saw the script.” It’s that kind of movie.
By Bill Kaufman