“The Identical”
By Lexia Banks
Grade: F
If I kept a list of life regrets, watching this movie would be up there right under the time I ate at White Castle.
Blake Rayne stars in “The Identical” as Ryan Wade , a preacher’s son who doesn’t quite fit into the Bible mold. Since he was kid, Ryan has had a gift for music, a gift that grows into his passion as he gets older.
But Ryan’s father, Reece Wade , has other plans. Reece wants his son to follow his footsteps into the ministry.
As Ryan struggles to make his father happy, another man is living out Ryan’s dream as a budding rock star. The man is none other than Ryan’s long-lost twin brother, Drexel Hemsley .
Go ahead, and get your eye rolls and groans out of the way because it only gets worse from here.
The boys’ parents, William and Helen Hemsley , were a young couple starting out during the Great Depression. Though times were hard, they were happily expecting their first born. Then the stork blindsided them with a two-for-one sale.
Knowing they couldn’t raise two children, the Hemsleys decided to give one of their boys to the Wades.
From there, it is a frustrating journey as Ryan sets out to discover who he truly is.
There is an irritating lack of common sense in this film. The movie is mostly set in the 1950s and 1960s . As a rock star, Drexel Hemsley performs on television, his picture is on album covers and he’s in movies.
Yet, every time someone sees Ryan all we get is a slightly stunned, “Oh my gosh, you look just like him.”
As identical twins who both look and sound exactly the same, it is not possible that at least one person in that era didn’t put the dots together, especially Ryan himself.
Another annoying aspect is that the look and sound of the characters Ryan Wade and Drexel Hemsley are obviously based off of Elvis Presley who would have been rising to fame at the same time but is only mentioned once.
What’s more, the actor Blake Rayne actually lived as an Elvis impersonator , making his life eerily similar to that of his character’s.
The acting is awful. The story is horrible. The wardrobe could result in projectile vomiting.
Just don’t, guys. Just don’t.
