10 Feel Good Movies With Heartbreaking Hidden Secrets
4. The Parent Trap
This one might seem like a reach, but no more than The Parent Trap itself. Before there’s any dissection though, there’s the fact the actual parents are terrible.
While both daughters are played by one actress (Lindsay Lohan) and therefore utterly indistinguishable, in real life there are a few tells which help when it comes to telling twins apart. Not to mention their personalities are completely different.
The whole movie revolves around the girls pushing their parents back together, setting traps to either ward off other beaus or to draw their parents closer together. The warm and fuzzy (though entirely predictable) ending sees Lohan’s twins successful, and the parents reunited.
There is of course still the matter of what happens after the movie though. The parents are happy, the daughters are happy, everyone is happy, let’s celebrate! Except, happy endings don’t last.
It would be easy to dismiss every happy ending as ‘it won’t last’, but with The Parent Trap there’s real substance. The parents may grow to resent the kids for meddling, while the kids may continue with traps to get their way. Plus, once the warm glow has faded, the parents may well be on edge from their kids’ interventions in the future.