There is a bell curve graph that determines the peak 90’s movies. Don’t ask me what the left and right most parts of this graph show you. There are way too many incredible 90’s films both great and miserable that can be placed at either side of the spectrum.
Pulp Fiction. Forrest Gump. Toy Story. Sixth Sense. Men In Black. The Shawshank Redemption. Fargo. Saving Private Ryan. Dad gum, the list keeps going. Face Off. The Lion King. Fight Club. Did anyone in the 90’s do anything other than go to the movies?
However, I firmly believe that 1998’s The Parent Trap sits atop the bell curve as “peak 90’s”. The curve to me is a measure of manic-ness and wholesomeness which the 90’s were filled with. Babe hits towards the wholesomeness edge of the scale while The Silence of the Lambs hits manic with an acme brick to the face.
The Parent Trap is the peak. I will explain with a few short summations:
Wholesome: two long lost siblings bringing their mother and father back together thru hijinks and schemes.
Manic: two adults splitting up their twin daughters at birth during their divorce agreement.
Wholesome: becoming friends at summer camp and realizing they have more in common than they thought.
Manic: Insinuating to their father’s 26 year old fiancé that they can’t keep count of the women he’s been running around with.
Wholesome: Dad choosing his daughters over his 26 year old fiancé when confronted with a “me or them” ultimatum.
Manic: A 26 year old giving you an ultimatum where you choose between your children or them.
Wholesome: learning about your mom and dad thru stories from your lost sibling.
Manic: your mother/father, grandparents, extended family, friends, and others withholding the fact that you have a mother/father and a sister who lives a completely different life in isolation from you. No phone calls. No pictures. No visitations. Completely isolated.
Perhaps I’m mistaking manic with absurdity. There a lots of different options for which word to use but I think I can eliminate absurd after digging into the definitions. While I do believe that the characters within The Parent Trap do act irrationally there is nothing to entertain the idea that they agree that the universe is meaningless or that their lives have no meaning. If anything the twins find their life’s purpose with reconnecting their mother and father. Absurd stresses the lack of logical sense or harmonious agreement. There is an argument that this universe was perhaps out of harmonious agreement once the twins were separated at birth.
. . .
I tend to over analyze everyday life. So I can end up in rabbit holes where I am obsessed with trying to justify my own thoughts or rationalize my theories. I’ve identified when I get to these points and inevitably sitting at the end off the rabbit hole are a handful of individuals, specifically Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and John Ford all saying in unison:
“If the characters were rational, the movie would be dull.”
Movies are not made to imitate life, movies are made to escape it.
W Is For Will 
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