July 17, 1996

MULTIPLICITY is the Michael Keaton clone movie. I remembered it being okay at best, but Keaton being very good at playing multiple characters who are distinguishable from each other just based on his mannerisms. Yes, I was correct about all that.

It’s directed by Harold Ramis, who I hold in high regard because of GROUNDHOG DAY, but I don’t think any of his other movies reach those heights. Certainly not this one.

Doug Kinney (Michael Keaton the year before JACKIE BROWN) is some kind of manager at an L.A. construction company, he’s forced to work long hours, doesn’t see the family enough, all that. I was impressed that at least he misses his daughter’s Campfire Girls graduation instead of the standard Little League game or piano recital.

When his wife Laura (Andie MacDowell, SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE) gets an opportunity to go back to work like they’d always planned, Doug is a real dick about it at first. He makes her cry! But he calms down and says they’ll figure out a way to do it. She says they’d need a miracle.

You asked for miracles, I give you the Gemini Institute, Malibu, California. Doug is doing a remodel there when Dr. Leeds (Harris Yulin, SHORT FUSE) sees him struggling at his job and introduces him to his secret: he made clones of himself. And he convinces Doug that this is the way he can get the time he needs in his life. So he does! He doesn’t tell anyone, just creates a secret garage apartment for the clone and sends him to work. Now original Doug has time to cook and take care of the kids and seem like a miracle husband.

But after a month he gets sick of being MR. MOM and tells Laura a bunch of sexist stuff about how she should be doing it and “you’re a nurturer.” The clone won’t take care of the kids, because he’s even more macho than him. But anyway, is it fair for Doug #2 to have to do all the work? What is he, a slave? He wants time to himself too, so he makes Doug #3, an uptight, effeminate but nice clone. Keaton seems to verge on gay stereotypes at times, but not too bad. And eventually there’s a fourth clone who, because he’s a copy of a copy, did not turn out right. This is also potentially offensive if you take him as disabled or something, but I have to admit it makes me laugh to see him happily off in his own world and doing weird things. Like when he slides a slice of pizza into his wallet and then puts it in his pocket.

There’s a strong supporting cast. Eugene Levy (HEAVY METAL), Ann Cusack (TANK GIRL), Brian Doyle-Murray (NOTHING BUT TROUBLE), Julie Bowen (HAPPY GILMORE), Glenn Shadix (SLEEPWALKERS), Richard Masur (MY SCIENCE PROJECT) and John de Lancie (ARCADE) all show up. But of course it’s mostly a showcase for Keaton.

The effects are seamless – they do all kinds of gimmicks like walking in front of each other, passing things to each other, etc., but it doesn’t really call attention to itself or feel choppy because Keaton does such a good job distinguishing the characters and interacting with himself. Of course he’s funny in general, so I got some laughs just from the way he says things, and the ludicrous lies he comes up with to explain things to people (usually why he has a different outfit than the one they just saw him in). I suppose it’s a passable comedy because there aren’t many things that play like they’re supposed to be funnier than they are, other than some of the slapstick of knocking things over in the restaurant when they’re trying to leave without anybody noticing that there are two of them.

It’s similar to the GROUNDHOG DAY approach in that it doesn’t waste time with explanations and details about its gimmick. It never directly says that the cloning is illegal or anything like that, so it doesn’t have to get into why no one else does it or knows about it. In fact, the way he asks how much it costs and then we’re not shown whether he had to pay for it or not makes me wonder if there was originally some reveal about the Gemini institute that was removed, sorta like GROUNDHOG DAY once had an explanation for the time loop. Instead MULTIPLICITY just gives him the clones and then doesn’t discuss the technology again, it only cares about the potential situations and metaphors. I think that’s the right approach.

Although I wouldn’t say I liked this more now than at the time, I might have a little deeper appreciation for its ideas. Even having chosen a much simpler lifestyle than Doug (no kids) I’ve often been stressed about not having enough time or energy to do all the things I want to do. I relate when he confesses, “I feel guilty because I don’t spend enough time with my wife and my kids. And then I… I get resentful about it because I feel like I should, you know, maybe get a little time for myself. It’s like work is first and my family is a close second and I’m a… I’m a distant third bringing up the rear, you know.”

So I understand the fantasy appeal of the clones, as well as the subsequent moral that if you really could segment your life like this you’d be missing out, even on the things you get out of working. (Is this kind of what that show Severance is about? I haven’t watched it.) If you’re farming out parts of your life to clones, how do you decide which parts to keep? Also there’s something to examine in this separation of his different aspects, his so-called masculine and feminine sides becoming individuals, which has both advantages and disadvantages over his balanced self. So by observing them he can understand himself better.

This is credited as based on a short story by Chris Miller (best known as a writer of ANIMAL HOUSE, which is partly based on his college experiences). Miller wrote the script with his wife Mary Hale and sold it to Columbia before the short story was even published in National Lampoon. Then it was rewritten by the team of Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel (CITY SLICKERS, A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN).

Judging from an early Variety story about the movie, Miller’s version was about an advertising executive. I’m glad they changed that, because I’m sure working class Doug is easier to root for. But I don’t personally find him that relatable. For me it plays more like “he’s fucking it up” than “he’s like me, he’s fucking it up.” That goes for both his lack of planning how to pull off this clone thing and his poor marriage choices.

It has a bit of that female-lead-in-a-comedy issue I mentioned with Jada Pinkett’s character in THE NUTTY PROFESSOR. MacDowell is so good at playing this sort of role sincerely that it gets aggravating having to see her put up with all this shit in the name of comedy. It works better here because it’s a more grounded movie and they’re married and have kids, you can see her struggling with what she thinks she’s experiencing (a husband having rapid mood changes and memory loss and then saying “I like pizza” when she tries to have a serious talk with him). But at times I found it upsetting enough to interfere with this being the light comedy intended.

At first they’re a good couple, they really talk to each other, they share a sense of humor, they’re also very cuddly. That there are other scenes where he gets angry and says horrible shit is not a contradiction. I can accept that their relationship is complicated. But I did struggle with accepting the choice required by the premise: to not tell his wife about the clones. Okay, yeah, that’s the joke, he needs science fiction technology to fulfill what he wants from life and what she wants from marriage, and if he let her in on how he was doing it it would raise so many other questions. But the movie never really considers the morality of not being honest with her. After the happy ending, where it seems he can tackle life on his own and do a better job than before, he still doesn’t tell her. I can’t pretend everything’s great in the marriage when he’s still keeping the world’s biggest secret from his wife!

I didn’t remember this but MULTIPLICITY was a pretty big flop, failing to make back its $45 million budget in theaters. Apparently some blamed it on opening against the Olympics, while others argued it was just that everybody was still seeing INDEPENDENCE DAY and THE NUTTY PROFESSOR.

I don’t hate it like I hate those much more popular movies. It has Keaton and it has a little something going on under the hood. But it still feels so mild about everything – mildly funny, mildly sweet, mildly thoughtful. I think of it as such a thoroughly okay, mediocre, middle of the road movie, so it’s funny that it required such top of the line craftsman: cinematographer László Kovács (EASY RIDER), production designer Jackson DeGovia (DIE HARD, SPEED), visual effects supervisor Richard Edlund (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, ALIEN 3). Composer George Fenton notably did GANDHI and DANGEROUS LIAISONS and shit, but he’s done over 100 feature films, not to mention endless tv dramas, wildlife documentaries and radio jingles, so of course he could be counted on to do a vaguely jazzy score so polished it makes HARRIET THE SPY sound like the rawest, sweatiest funk that ever bumped out of the alley door of a club in the ‘70s. Maybe if you blended together the favorite music of all the clones it would turn into that score. Smooth jazz smoothie.

Yeah, MULTIPLICITY is alot of good people working hard to make something okay. It happens.

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Slam Evil Summer connections:

Costume designer Shay Cunliffe also did LONE STAR.

Like THE CABLE GUY, there’s a big scene in the restroom of a restaurant during a date. In THE CABLE GUY Jim Carrey dunks Owen Wilson’s head in the toilet, while here Michael Keaton dunks Michael Keaton’s head in the sink.

Like THE NUTTY PROFESSOR it has a prominent use of “This Is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan (though without Jordan himself performing it this time).

There’s a scene where Doug is telling Laura about somebody getting fired at work and she asks who will replace him and he says, “I’ll give you a hint. You sleep with him,” and she jokes…

It’s probly meant as derogatory (there’s also a joke about hot AM/PM workers) but I like to think that there really is an attractive video store clerk who popped into her mind as the guy she could be having an affair with. Either way, I will consider it a connection to WALKING AND TALKING, where the protagonist actually does sleep with “the video store guy.”