If you think Disney's recent run of "live-action" remakes are the worst thing they've done since Song of the South, then you haven't spent time exploring their history of TV movies. It wasn't always a "Wonderful World of Disney," sometimes it was crap like The Parent Trap II. Nowadays, this dumpster fire of a film is found lingering on the DVD for the original Parent Trap so they can give you the illusion that you are getting a great deal with a 2-movies-for-the-price-of-1 bargain. What they don't tell you is that no one in their right mind would watch this sequel more than once (unless they're an idiot like me.) The most glaring problem with this film is that the kids are extremely annoying. There's a style of acting that was common for young actors in the 1980s that is hard to describe, but if you've ever heard it, I'd be surprised if it didn't annoy you. It seemed even more prevalent in preteen girls, even though I don't recall this being the way actual girls talked back then. This movie is built on two of those girls hanging out with each other all the time, and it's made even worse because the girls are terrible actors, so they can't even do it well.
Of course, this wouldn't be a sequel if Hayley Mills didn't return to reprise her dual role as Susan and Sharon. I kind of hated how they worked both of these characters into the story, particularly because it seems the film has a delusional sense of how falling in love works. The idea that forming a romantic connection with one twin is the same as falling in love with the other is ludicrous, particularly when the two have completely different personalities. They pass it off as if this is an attempt to recreate the trick the girls played in the original film, but that was on two divorced people who have established chemistry and might have some unresolved feelings for one another. This time they are attempting to manufacture a relationship out of thin air merely because their parents happen to both be single and available. The Parent Trap II also has that cheap look you get from TV movies, particularly back in the 1980s. There's nothing cinematic about them, and the sets look like they were reused from an episode of Eight is Enough. It's not that The Parent Trap II is the worst thing ever made, it's just so lazy and poorly made that it deserves to be lost to the annals of time.
Of course, this wouldn't be a sequel if Hayley Mills didn't return to reprise her dual role as Susan and Sharon. I kind of hated how they worked both of these characters into the story, particularly because it seems the film has a delusional sense of how falling in love works. The idea that forming a romantic connection with one twin is the same as falling in love with the other is ludicrous, particularly when the two have completely different personalities. They pass it off as if this is an attempt to recreate the trick the girls played in the original film, but that was on two divorced people who have established chemistry and might have some unresolved feelings for one another. This time they are attempting to manufacture a relationship out of thin air merely because their parents happen to both be single and available. The Parent Trap II also has that cheap look you get from TV movies, particularly back in the 1980s. There's nothing cinematic about them, and the sets look like they were reused from an episode of Eight is Enough. It's not that The Parent Trap II is the worst thing ever made, it's just so lazy and poorly made that it deserves to be lost to the annals of time.