Character: Julius Benedict
Year: 1988
I get the feeling Arnold has a pretty big ego. It's not necessarily a bad thing - it's probably impossible not to have one and still succeed in bodybuilding, politics and Hollywood - but if you've been following this blog for any amount of time, you probably realize by now that I'm a fan of humble. People that don't take themselves too seriously. And often, the best way to determine such a thing, seeing that I'll never know any of these people in real life, is whether the person is willing to poke fun at themselves.
One would think that Twins then, would be the proof in Arnold's pudding. A pure comedy, poking fun at Arnold's action hero roots and all that good stuff. Only I watched it last night (are you seeing a pattern here?) and although he's a good sport about it all, there was something about it that just didn't sell me on the whole 'I don't take myself too seriously' angle that I'm sure he was going for. Sure, he plays the fish-out-of-water perfectly, and the 'DeVito/Arnold as twins' angle is a pretty solid movie pitch, but I still think Arnold's ego is all over this movie.
He plays 'the perfect man', engineered in a lab, and the pinnacle of modern science. Sure the gags are all at his expense, but never really in a way that he actually has to be able to laugh at himself in order for them to work. The jokes are more along the lines of 'his muscles are too big', 'he loves helping orphans too much', 'Kelly Preston wants to seduce him too badly'. I mean, it's still a good, enjoyable, funny movie. But I get the feeling that Arnold read the script and was like 'good, now people can see my funny and softer side... oh hey, here on page 10, how about I beat up a guy with an axe?'
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