Movie Review: "The Identical" (Rated PG) - East Idaho News
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Movie Review: “The Identical” (Rated PG)

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moviereview?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1409917839531Freestyle Releasing(NEW YORK) — The Identical is a semi-ambitious but nonsensical story inspired by the fact that Elvis Presley had a stillborn twin brother. In this film, the identical twins live, though neither is named Elvis. Instead, we get Dexter and Drexel Hemsley, both of whom grow up with Elvis’ good looks and talent, but take very different life paths.

The twins are born to a poor couple living in Alabama during the Depression. One night, downtrodden and desperate to find work to support his infant sons, father William Hemsley stumbles upon a tent revival, where a passionate preacher named Reece Wade (Ray Liotta) delivers a moving sermon about selflessness, and shares that he and his wife, Louise (Ashley Judd), were recently told they wouldn’t be able to have children. 

Moved by the story, William convinces his wife to give Dexter to the Wades, who can better provide for the boy, leaving the Hemsleys with only one child to raise. It’s a scene, like so many others in this movie, that lacks the emotional punch it ought to have. 

The narrative then focuses on Dexter’s life with the Wades. Reece is doing his best to make sure his son, now named Ryan, follows him to the pulpit. Ryan’s a good son and tries to fulfill his father’s dream, but he knows the church isn’t his calling: he’s a gifted musician and singer, with little desire to be a preacher. 

In the meantime, Drexel Hemsley is becoming a music star. And that’s a problem, for this movie. Writer
Howard Klausner intentionally scripts Drexel’s career to mirror Elvis Presley’s, so we’re left with the impression that this world doesn’t have an Elvis: it has as a Drexel Hemsley. And that makes sense — until later in the film, when a character name-drops Elvis. In other words, Elvis exists in a world with another wildly successful singer who looks and sounds exactly him? DUMB. The conceit deflates an already struggling film whose only strength is the undercurrent of sadness born of the notion that a poor couple had to give up a child because they couldn’t afford to raise him.

Will Ryan and Drexel ever meet? I know the answer but believe me, it’s not worth finding out. The Identical’s heart is in the right place, and Ray Liotta delivers one of his more impressive performances, but it’s all for naught. With nonsensical character choices and plot points unworthy of a major motion picture, The Identical feels more like the kind of movie you’d find on TV’s Lifetime.

One-and-a-half out of five stars.


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