The gimmick of mismatched twins separated at birth: if it was funny before (Start the Revolution without Me), perhaps lightning could strike again. Or if not a bull's-eye, at least somewhere on the target, say about the first ring from the outermost. That would be, and is, not bad at all. Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin are corporate heads on the one side, small-town gals on the other. Both actresses give rounded and clearly distinguishable shape to all four roles between them, but the edge, if something so invidious may be noted, would have to go to Tomlin -- an uncanny copier of human types (Miss Xerox of the Decade) while Midler seems to expect human types to copy her, and so is less motivated in the direction of versatility. The initial logic of the situation -- why one set of twins would own a factory in the other set's town, and how that second set would come into so close a proximity with the first -- is solidly founded, and the subsequent round-robin of mistaken identities is breathlessly well stage-managed (though it necessitates skating over acres of thin ice, such as both pairs of twins having the same Christian names, and everyone around them, and them themselves, having an extraordinary insensitivity to modes of dress and differences of dialect -- or in Midler's case, having a tendency to drop a dialect whenever convenient). And the torturously delayed moment when all four twins come together in the same place at the same time -- the ladies' room in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel -- is done to a turn, including the photographic trick work. Directed by Jim Abrahams. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd