markasscarlyle The story is so basic and predictable, the acting is brutal, but...... It's like a watchable TV movie. I did watch it all and .... Simply put its terrible movie making but I enjoyed parts of it enough to want to watch it to the end... Train wreck or car accident type idea ...curious as to how predictable it will be to the end. The music is more basic than the Beatles But it's catchy and sounds like Elvis and I guess that's why I watched the whole movie. The veteran actors are obviously putting in time and the director took the first or second takes to keep within budget. Every thing is stereotypical 1950's language, slang and morals. The dialogue is hilarious I assume the writers were doing things tongue in cheek.

P42 It's hard to comprehend that this movie was made. It's Forrest Gump meets Walk the Line meets The Parent Trap. Is that too much for one movie? Absolutely. But on top of that, it also tries to be appealing to Evangelical Christians. From the many 10/10 reviews on this board that mention this aspect, it's clear that somehow this worked. Apparently simply containing Christians that aren't complete buffoons is enough for that.Elvis fans have not responded in kind, which makes sense as this movie is emphatically *not* about Elvis. It's just that all the world building that was done is all based on Elvis' life and music, only obscured enough that there is no chance of any copyright infringement litigation. This is extremely distracting.As to the story: it's baffling in the complexity of its setup, and the complete lack of subsequent payoff. Twins are separated at birth. They never meet. While Drexel is a famous musician and the other, Ryan, is an amateur musician who becomes an impersonator of the famous one, we don't even see Ryan attend a show of Drexel's. In fact, we barely see Drexel at all.Ryan visits his birth mother in the hospital and sings one of Drexel's songs to her. He doesn't know it's his real mother. She doesn't realize he's there. There's no subsequent consequence to this extremely coincidental scene. Which happens right after he makes a delivery at the hospital, which happens to be where his ex- girlfriend works, so it's coincidence upon coincidence... of course he hooks up with her again, as we knew already he would, since she is the narrator of the entire film. Yes, the narrator is not a point of view character. Which *can* make for interesting storytelling, if you really invest in it. The movie doesn't. Ryan's adopted father, played by Ray Liotta, is a preacher. He wants Ryan to become a preacher also. There is some kind of conflict about this between the two of them... but no framing of this conflict. Ryan's simply in school to become a minister, and then drops out. This has no immediate consequences for the father's life... which it easily could have had. Why not, for example, make Ryan an assistant preacher in his father's church? And then he doesn't show up because he's got a performance? That's actual conflict. This is truly amateurish screen writing, in that they knew there had to be some kind of conflict, but didn't know how to create it. Yes Ray Liotta really wants his son to become a preacher. He says so many times. So you think that when Ryan drops out there's consequences? Nah. See, he already has a job lined up, because this shady garage owner likes his singing. Does the preacher break off contact with his rebellious son? Nah. He even goes to the son's shows.The message in the end: always be yourself. Unless you can be Elvis. Then always be Elvis*. There's nothing Christian about this, and there's nothing useful in it either. If we ever find ourselves the identical lost twin of a celebrity, we'd better hope the celebrity dies in a plane crash, so we can use our own creativity to continue their careers.I could go on... about the extremely uneven music, about the various ways in which characters age or not, about the totally out of the blue reference to the Six Day War, about Seth Green's hair and language, which do not belong together, about the two black characters that are both one-scene and very subservient, etc. It's a rare movie that is this messy. An absolute must see!*Sorry, I mean Drexel of course.

TxMike I was attracted to this title because I have long been fascinated with identical twins. Although "identical" genetically, some sets behave almost exactly the same while others are quite different. I am close friends with a set who look alike but are quite different in most ways and have taken, so far, quite different paths in life.This story plays on the concept of identical twins separated shortly after birth and growing up in different families but as adults are almost the same. There have been a number of studies over the years of such identical twins growing up quite differently but being almost the same as adults.It starts in the 1930s when the parents of the twins can't make it financially so give one of them for adoption by the local preacher and his wife who had just witnessed that they could not have children. Because this was an unusual action the parents pretended one of the two babies had died and held a funeral, even burying an empty box and installing a headstone.The boy grows up as Ryan Wade and his adopted father plans for him to follow the calling, become a minister. Even though Ryan goes to divinity school, his heart isn't in it, he drops out, works at blue collar jobs like delivery man or auto mechanic after his stint in the Army. Then he learns about famous singer, Drexel Hemsley, who looks exactly like him and sings the way he does (the same actor, a singer and Elvis impersonator plays both roles.) His own career gets kick-started when his wife encourages him to enter a Drexel "sing-alike" contest which he of course wins, then gets a manager and begins his own successful career, but only by impersonating the famous Drexel, who in fact is his brother.Ray Liotta overacts a bit as the preacher Reece Wade, but Ashley Judd is just right as the preacher's wife Louise Wade. The real life singer Blake Rayne, not an actor before this movie, plays Ryan Wade and Drexel Hemsley, but almost all the focus is on Ryan and his path to discover who he really is.I really like this movie, Rayne's acting style is pleasant and the story has a lot of meaning.SPOILERS: As Ryan's career as "The Identical" had taken off, Drexel's small plane crashed and he was killed. (This type of accident happened a number of times to real singers in the 1950s and 1960s.) Then Ryan's dad had a mild heart attack, in the process Ryan found a letter explaining who he really was. He had a short meeting with his birth father, now blind, at Drexel's gravesite, and later thanked his adopted father for all that he had done for him. His singing career continued.

gymjudge Blake Rayne is gifted in his acting ability and singing talent. I greatly enjoyed watching the movie. Excellent supporting cast. The movie shows the importance of family and moral values. The character of Ryan, Blake Rayne's character, shows that despite the racial ignorance during that time frame in history he saw blacks as people. It took people similar to Ryan during that time people to affect change as we saw during the civil rights period. I like the message of following your dreams, to often we work for the sake of working. We need to enjoy life and the pleasure life gives us. I enjoy watching a movie without vulgarity, vulgarity are words of ignorance. The Identical is a great family movie. I hope to purchase the soundtrack.