Two Of A Kind Is One Bad Film
By John Lavcock, Entertainment writer
Two of a Kind, starring John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, {Parental Guidance: A bit of vulgarity and sexual situations.)
Glade Place 1.
The only good thing to come out of Two Of A Kind is the soundtrack album and the movie even manages to mangle that meal ticket.
Olivia Newton John hit single, Strange Twist Of Fate gets good play from the film serving as a bright theme. But the other songs including decent contributions from such proven hit makers as Journey and Boz Scaggs, have been run through a food processor, leaving only scraps of the music, scattered apparently at random.
The whole movie, for that matter, is as lumpy as Santa’s hag but contains far fewer goodies.
IT LOOKS as it the original project. with its high-priced stars, fell to pieces, and many hands have tried to tape it back together with band-aids - here a slapstick pie fight in the elegant Plazza Hotel, there a fast-cut cruise of New York’s bridges for John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John to look romantic in front of somewhere else a hostage incident letting Travolta swash-buckle.
But none of it adds up to a coherent approach. One and one certainly does not make two or anything here, even though this is supposed to be a match made in heaven.
Or, rather, in Heaven Can Wait.
Like that breezy Warren Beatty comedy, Two of a Kind looks to the Almighty for inspiration, assuming that the greatest director of them all is as interested in ON-J and JT as are teenage fans.
Ready to wash out the world again, God (who sounds a lot like Gene Hackman) lots His Four Angels take a crack at finding one good man in the place.
Scatman Crothers, Charles Durning, Beatrice Straight and Castulo Guerra choose Travolta, an inventor who thinks the world needs edible sunglasses. Owing money for some reason or another to two thugs, he is in the process of robbing a bank, but ON-J the teller makes off with the loot instead.
In Hollywood, if not heaven, this guarantees romance.
IN A BRILLIANT stroke of typecasting, ON-J is supposed to be a struggling actress. Age and her dedication to physical fitness is rapidly eroding her little-girl charm. As a singer, she has radar for locating the centre stripe in the middle of pop music’s road, but her instincts tor acting are woefully limited. To amend Dorothy Parker’s old insult, ON-J runs the gamut of emotions from A to B. Here, that means Awfully cute to Brittle.
Travolta, a more commanding physical performer, is kept off-balance by the movie’s confusion. In one scene he is making vulgar sex puns with a door-knob. in the next playing Mr. Sensitive. His chemistry with 0N~J can only appeal to those that want to see National Enquirer cover stars in discreet sex clinches, rather than fully realized characters.
Farce can indeed be heavenly when played with assurance and style. Two of a Kind has brief flashes — Oliver Reed curling his mustache as the Devil, with a fondness for Gay - 90s velvet gambling suits, or Scatman Crothers leading his fellow angels on a golf game across the cloudy links of heaven.
Those moments look accidental, when the angels stop the movie, rewind the film and change the action, any hope of style flies out the editing table. They clearly need a new director.