TWINGE

TWINS (1988)
dir: Ivan Reitman

Twinge is actually a noun and not a verb, as in “I have a small twinge in my arm”, maybe they meant it as a combination of 'Twins' and 'cringe'. Much of this parody looks rushed, in parts that will be evident in a minute.

MAD #288, July 1989
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

Twins is about two twins separated at birth as the result of a medical experiment to create the perfect human being by having a woman inseminated by six men. The perfect specimen was Julius (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who was raised on a desert island another imperfect brother, Vincent (Danny DeVito) was a result of all the leftover DNA. The movie is about Julius finding Vincemt and their going on an adventure to find their real mother.

Many of MAD's movie parodies often begin with the audience in a theater on watching it at home and making comments about it. Here the splash panel is a drawing taken from the poster and the comments are all off-camera captions, suggesting Drucker didn't have time to draw anything else.

The parody is more about the actors' personalities and being twins but doesn't get into the plot about how Vincent owes a gambling debt and loan sharks are after him as well as a gangster after a device Vincent has in his possession. There's another plot where Julius has never been with a woman before and Vincent teaches him to cut loose. MAD gets their names mixed up too.

Vincent is a philandering letch who has a girlfriend, Linda, that's not used in this parody. Her friends tell her not to trust him. She has a sister, Marnie (Kelly Preston) who hates Vincent but meets Julius and develops a crush on him.

Julius goes to Los Angeles and seeks out Vincent at the orphanage where he was raised. They tell Julius how bad Vincent was, how he's probably in prison, he is for ignoring traffic tickets, and Julius finds him and bails him out. Vincent won't believe he's Julius' twin brother and keeps trying to ditch him. Julius keeps finding him by twin telepathy. Vincent gets tips from a the owner of a parking garage (David Caruso) that's a front for a chop shop and steals cars from them.

Also not in the parody: Vincent finds something in one of the cars he steals and finds out it's worth five million dollars. He has to go to Houston to get it. Julius finds out their biological mother is in New Mexico which is on their way but needs to take a shower first. Vincent sees this as an opportunity to abandon Vincent but just as he's about to leave he's visited by Linda and Marnie with a cake for his birthday. In New Mexico they go to the office of Dr. Mitchell Traven (Nehemiah Persoff), the doctor in charge of the experiment, to find their mother, but denies having anything to do with it until it makes Julius angry. All this time the loan sharks and a ganaster competing for the device are in pursuit of him. This road trip is about a third of the movie.

On the road, while the men and women are staying in separate hotel rooms, Vincent leaves and Marnie comes in, taking Julius' virginity. They have found out their mother, Mary Ann Benedict (Bonnie Bartlett), at an artists' colony. She was a famous artist who founded the colony but denies who she is because she assumes they are trying to scam her, saying Mary Ann is long dead.

Also not in the parody 2: Vincent becomes disillusioned he no longer has a mother and abandons everyone in the desert, driving to Houston to get his money. He finds out it's a fuel combustion engine and gets his money. The people giving him the money are there to steal it and abandon him but he doesn't care. The gangster that was after him tracks him down as does Julius, they outsmart the gangster, and Julius convinces Vincent to do the right thing and the the engine to its proper owner.

They use the reward to start a legitimate corporation. The mother sees this in the newspaper, realizes they were honest people, and reconnects with them.

Here's how the Australians saw the movie.