The Identical may have hit blu-ray last week but we're finally here to worn you about this movie.
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| "Elvis was never this sexy. Wait a second....." |
Thanks to Darren Aronofsky’s atheist but
brilliant Noah, the floodgates of bad
evangelical Christian faith based movies burst open wide to cash in on the
crest of the God-less film’s success.
More than ever, 2014 was the year inspirational Bible beaters dominated
the multiplexes, beginning reasonably enough with Son of God, God’s Not Dead
before it crashed with a neurotic bang with Kirk
Cameron’s Saving Christmas.
Somewhere in between, The
Identical slipped under the radar with little to no publicity. A real shame, because it’s probably the most
expensive, star studded chunk of unbridled insanity this year! At least Kirk Cameron had the good sense to
do it practically for free in his backyard and didn’t rob investors’ wallets
dry by subverting a worldwide cultural icon.
In short, this work of fiction imagines Elvis Presley’s stillborn
identical twin brother not only lived, but the king himself became a Christian
rock star!
From inception on paper to production on
film, The Identical is an
aggressively awful train wreck of enormous proportions. First time director Dustin Marcellino, I am
convinced, never met another human being before this movie. The plot, if it qualifies as one, is
incoherent, nonsensical and free of conflict, giving viewers no veritable
reason to sit through it other than some dogged measure of camp. Characters seem to age at different times,
with Ashley Judd remaining in her 20s where Drexel as a teenager looks to be in
his late 40s. Blake Rayne looks and
sounds just like Elvis, and then you can just stop right there.
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| "I'm just sitting here holding the pain of this movie inside my sphincter. Ahhhhh.... what I would do to have the Goodfellas years back." |
Watching Ray Liotta (seriously, why is he in
this thing, let alone serve as executive producer on it?) try to play off of
Rayne’s inability to act is cloying and embarrassing to behold. For a premise that could have been genuinely
interesting, asking what if Elvis’ brother had lived, is wasted when nothing is
done with it whatsoever. But probably
the nuttiest thread within The Identical is
a brief mention of Elvis’ name, which begs the question, if Elvis existed in
the world of this movie, why would anyone care to see a bad ripoff artist like
Drexel Hemsley who looks closer to Jack White of The White Stripes than The
King.
Of the bottom 10 worst films of
all time, The Identical absolutely
belongs on the list!
-Andrew Kotwicki