The Parent Trap

• "Caught in the Act: The Making of the Parent Trap" is a good documentary (about 30 minutes), including interviews with Hayley Mills, Maureen O'Hara, director David Swift, Joanna Barnes, and more. It provides a lot of background details on how the idea for the film came about, selecting the cast, fine-tuning the screenplay, etc.

• "Disney Legend: Hayley Mills" is a 25-minute feature all about Hayley, and it's quite good. It includes photos and home movies from her childhood as well as interviews with Hayley, Maureen O'Hara, Dean Jones, Kevin Corcoran, David Swift, Nancy Olson, and others she worked with at Disney. Hayley talks about her family, her experiences at Disney, and her departure from that Disney image in the late '60s.

• "Seeing Double" is a short feature on the split-screen technology that allowed viewers to see two images of Hayley Mills side by side at once. This technology was quite innovative and experimental at the time, but it worked beautifully.

• The Sherman Brothers featurette is a short but interesting bit of facts and trivia on two men who wrote songs for many memorable Disney films, including "Mary Poppins" and "The Parent Trap."

• "Lost Treasures: Who's the Twin?" is an interesting feature about Susan Henning, the girl who played the double for Hayley Mills in the film (in scenes with the camera over her shoulder or to her back). Now that I know to look for her, I can plainly see in several profile shots that the other twin is NOT Hayley. Watch the fight scene at the dance closely too. Henning is a warm presence and gives some little-known facts about the film and about Walt Disney.

• "Let's Get Together" is a music video of the two Hayleys singing the song from the movie.

• The Donald Duck animated cartoon, "Donald's Double Trouble," is a Disney short filmed a few years before this movie, but it's a cute bonus.

• Other special features include theatrical trailers, TV spots, radio spots, a lengthy Parent Trap photo gallery, and a 1961 Disney studio album. • The film's audio commentary by Hayley Mills and director David Swift is also a great feature. Hayley reveals many interesting tidbits about her experiences on the film, her relationships with her costars and Walt Disney, and how she views the film today. Swift offers his own recollections on Hayley's performance and other background information on the film. For example, the scene where Brian Keith finds the bra hanging on his shower was almost censored!

The widescreen transfer is wonderful. I'd never seen this film in its original aspect ratio, so this was a treat. The abundance of special features make this DVD edition truly wonderful. (I had no problems with it playing in my DVD player, either.) This is simply a fun family film that you can watch over and over. I know, because I have for the past 20 years.

I had to return my first set, because the case was broken on "Old Yeller". No big deal. But then...the secondary disc on "The Parent Trap" skipped and stalled, and "Swiss Family Robinson" wouldn't even load.

Having had terrible experience with Disney DVD's previously ("The Great Locomotive Chase"), I opted for a refund instead of dealing with the frustrations of another set that was defective.

Frankly, Disney's products seem to have so many problems, I doubt I will ever buy another one. Many of their movies are in the wrong ratio, some are terrible transfers ("Old Yeller" in particular, and also the Chinatown scene in "The Love Bug" comes to mind), and now I've had this set and "The Great Locomotive Chase" which have had "playability" issues.

For a company with such a great library of old movies, it is really sad that they put out such an inferior product. As I would love to include them in my DVD library. But one shouldn't have to concern themself with worrying whether a DVD is going to play or not when they purchase it.

Hayley Mills plays two different roles in the movie...as a set of twins separated at birth. It's similar to a Prince and the Pauper type story, but neither child is necessarily poor or living a bad life. One sister lives in California with her dad and the other lives in Boston with her mom. They find out that they are related only because they HATE each other at camp and get banished to share a room for the rest of camp. Then they make it their mission to get the parents back together and find out why they were separated in the first place! It's comical and touching. Probably very far fetched, which makes it all the more fun to watch.

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