The Identical

So I saw The Identical, and while I am now less confused about what the movie is about, whoo boy it is not a good movie. You might not know this, but apparently Elvis Pressley had a twin brother that was stillborn, and it was a big deal for him throughout his life. The movie The Identical asks “what if that child had lived, been raised by an evangelical Christian pastor, and eventually became a famous Elvis impersonator?” But, it asks that question in such a way that it doesn’t have to pay any royalties or license any music from the Elvis estate, so instead imagine that in the mid-20th century there was ANOTHER pop star that looks and sounds a lot of like Elvis but is actually named Drexel Helmsley, and then imagine that in my second sentence up there, I said “Drexel” instead of “Elvis.” Confused? Don’t worry, because the point beyond all that is that the movie is pretty dang bad.

In my confusion over what was going on here, along with the presence of actual movie actors I’d heard of like Ray Liotta, Ashley Judd, and Seth Green, I completely missed that this was a super Christian movie.  Like all of the conversations in this movie that aren’t music biopic clichés (“You can’t quit on me, we’re gonna be rich!” “I’m not interested in money, I want to make music!”) are about god and heavenly callings and so forth. This is a movie that goes from the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s and the only current event that the movie talks about that’s not directly related to the main characters is the Six Days War, when Ray Liotta gives an impassioned speech about how we must all support Israel in its time of need.

Again, this movie is bad. The acting is either wooden or 1000% over the top, the music is ridiculous in ways that I can’t really describe. Still, it is the better of the two movies that star Ray Liotta that came out this summer (ULTIMATE BURN ON SIN CITY!!!).