Movie Review :: Lifetime Network’s Double Double Trouble

Lifetime

Lifetime really ups the ante this week with its latest Saturday night original movie, taking a real risk on something that could have been a complete trainwreck but turns out to be extremely impressive and entertaining.

Double Double Trouble stars Tami Roman as twin sisters Drea and Ali, hosts of a cooking series in which they each use one specific ingredient to create two different dishes. We never see them actually cooking so we’ll just take their word for it. As the story begins, Drea is happily married and expecting a child, but she wakes up in the middle of the night covered in blood, having miscarried. Ali arrives at the hospital for support, and Drea’s husband is distraught but agrees with Drea that they will try again. Instead, Kevin leaves Drea and is in another relationship with a child on the way but when he hears the dog barking outside of his new house, he goes to get him but instead finds an intruder in a Black Hoodie, naturally, plunging a large knife into his neck. This Black Hoodie is not a mystery — or is it? It’s Drea. But would mild-mannered Drea be capable of such a thing?

The sisters go back to work and they are alerted that one of them needs to attend a network retreat and since Ali went the year before, Drea volunteers … but the network wants Ali to go because she is apparently more fun than her sister. Meanwhile, Drea starts making googly eyes at a man at the coffee shop, and the owner tells her he’s there every Monday and Friday, so Drea goes back Friday but he doesn’t show. There’s always Monday. At the retreat, Ali bumps into a man who makes some googly eyes at her and convinces her to attend a seminar … at which he happens to be the keynote speaker. They hit it off and then hit the sheets later that night, and when Ali returns, Drea can see that she has that look of love on her face that Drea usually gets because Ali never falls in love (just in lust apparently). Ali promises she will meet her beau soon, and when they all finally get together, Drea is crestfallen to see the man Ali has hooked up with is none other than the man she was ogling, Ryan. Awkward. Drea tries to be polite but Ali can clearly see something is wrong. Does Drea hate Ryan? Compounding the brewing sibling rivalry, a company wants to get into business with merchandising and expanding the show to a major network but there is just one catch — they only want Ali. She quickly refuses the offer, but something else comes up — a pregnancy. Being told she isn’t wanted by a merchandiser and then getting gut-punched by her sister’s pregnancy news is just too much for Drea at one time, and during a break in taping their show while Ali leaves the set, Drea squirts some liquid into her water bottle. When Ali returns, she takes a sip and almost immediately becomes violently ill, requiring hospitalization due to consumption of Listeria! While she will make a full recovery, her baby did not survive, but Drea is there for support. However, their producer Lamar alerts Drea that he has something to show her as they are editing the episode — during the break, one of the cameras was left in record mode and captured Drea tampering with Ali’s water. Lamar is horrified and plans to tell Ali what happened but as he’s leaving the building that night, Drea rushes up behind him and pushes him in front of a speeding car, killing him on the spot. Perhaps she isn’t as mild-mannered as we thought. As their situation grows more tense, Ali decides that she will spend some time with Ryan to recover from her trauma, but as the sisters’ birthday is approaching, Drea suddenly finds herself facing the day alone. Before Ali leaves, Drea offers her a cup of tea but she’s laced it with a sedative, knocking her out for the night. Instead of staying with her sister, Drea does her hair and make-up like Ali and shows up at Ryan’s house, making him think she is Ali.

The next morning when Ryan wakes up, ‘Ali’ is gone and he goes to their house to see why she left, but when he arrives Drea is in tears and Ali is angry with him because she was told by her sister that Ryan called and when Drea told him that Ali was asleep, he suggested she come over so they could have some fun. Ali has no reason to disbelieve her sister, and she tells Ryan she never wants to see him ever! But Drea made one fatal mistake — Ali is a stickler for things being in their place, and every time she takes her keys from the hook, she always makes sure her name on her keychain is facing out when she returns them. She noticed it was facing the wall and immediately knew that Ryan was telling the truth about Drea pretending to be her and going to his house. This widens the rift to the point that Ali does leave Drea, and on their birthday it is just Ali and Ryan at a cabin in the woods. Not the birthday Ali was planning — a designer they had approached had agreed to make identical dresses for the sisters — but it was perfect nonetheless. Ryan needs to go into town briefly and tells Ali to stay and put on that dress so he can take it off, but while he’s gone Ali is suddenly confronted by Drea which leads to a chase through the house, Drea wielding a knife similar to the one used to kill Kevin, and Ali finds a gun in the closet in which she is hiding. The sisters go hand-to-hand over the gun as Drea has taken it and is threatening to kill herself, and when Ryan arrives he hears a gunshot, finding Ali crying over the dead body of her sister. But was there time for Drea to make a switcheroo and it’s actually Ali dead on the floor? A few months later, Ryan and Ali seem solid and they are entertaining friends with the story of how they met, so this is obviously Ali, right? It is also a known fact that Ryan has a brother but they are not in touch because brother is in prison, but when the couple drives off they pass a car broken down on the side of the road and when the man turns and lifts his head, he has a very familiar face. Could we be in store for a sequel?

Lifetime

I have to admit I really don’t know who Tami Roman is except from seeing her in commercials for her VH1 relationship reality series Caught in the Act: Unfaithful, and as part of the Basketball Wives series. To me, she was someone who was famous for being famous (I only just learned she came onto the reality TV scene in the 1993 edition of The Real World on MTV). She has several acting gigs to her credit but this is my first real encounter with Ms. Roman and I have to say … I was very pleasantly surprised with her performance(s). It can be hard enough to play one character sometimes, but playing two with different personalities is a real challenge, especially when you have to be in the same scene with yourself, and Roman probably spends about 90% of the movie in scenes as both Ali and Drea. Watching her play the twins takes me back to the movie Big Business, in which Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin both played a set of twins, and how groundbreaking the special effects were at the time to achieve that illusion on screen. Seeing it now, while it still holds up, you can definitely spot some scenes where the technology struggled to match the ambitions. There appear to be no limitations here as director Gabriel Correa and his cinematographer and effects team give us some totally seamless shots featuring both Ali and Drea, a notable one near the beginning as Ali comes up behind Drea and they are both seen in a reflection in the mirror. Couple that with some skillful and smooth editing by Devin Taylor that goes from two shots (either with effects or the use of a body double seen from behind) to close-ups of Roman as both characters, and you will be convinced Roman herself has a twin who acted opposite her. These Lifetime movies generally don’t have huge budgets or lengthy shooting schedules, so what they have achieved here is beyond impressive and made the movie all the more enjoyable. Add in Sa’Rah Jones’ clever script that keeps you guessing as to who killed Kevin, while keeping the thrills and drama from tipping over into melodrama and you have a totally winning production.

Roman, of course, carries the whole movie on her shoulders. Had she not been able to create two convincingly different characters — and they aren’t radically different but different just enough — then this would not have worked at all. Roman clearly gives each woman a personality, Drea the more down-to-earth and settled one, Ali the one who can throw caution to the wind. Each woman has her own look, Drea with straight hair and muted make-up, Ali using curls and bright red lipstick as her signature, but when things get switched up Roman can convincingly have the character assume the identity of the other sister. She also gives us great empathy for Drea with all she’s gone through in her life (even going back to her childhood when even her mother connected more with Ali), never feeling like she is ‘enough’, while making Ali the opposite but she’s never so over-the-top that we can’t relate. The differences and the looks are subtle, but Roman pulls it all off with great skill.

Lifetime

Colin Lawrence does a fine job as Ryan, even if he is reduced to playing second (or third) fiddle to Roman, a man caught in a situation he has no idea even exists. He never saw Drea at the coffee shop, so his confusion as to her attitude with him is understandable. But he clearly shows that Ryan is completely into Ali and really has no connection with Drea. That also leaves us to wonder had he and Drea met first, would they have connected or would he have been more drawn to Ali? He also makes Ryan the most understanding partner in the world because it might be hard in the real world to accept someone back who accused you of trying to get with her sister and then tossing you out on your ass. Any way you slice it, Lawrence’s Ryan is a good egg. Hamza Fouad brings some light comedic energy to the role of Lamar, doting on the sisters because they have a hit show, but ready to sell Drea down the river at the drop of his comically over-sized hat. Devon Alexander plays the character of Jamal, a co-worker of Ryan’s, whom Drea treats like a peasant when she is trying to get with Ryan (she does not know in that moment that Ryan is at the same business retreat as Ali), and then Ryan sets up a double take with Jamal and Drea, and she does not appreciate his jokes at her expense while she attempts to golf for the first time. The look on his face when Drea says something that triggers his memory to have met her earlier is priceless. Needless to say, that date does not go well.

I came into Double Double Trouble with my guard up, not expecting much, not knowing if Tami Roman could act her way out of a wet paper bag, but I came away pleasantly surprised by her performance, by the story, and by the top-notch production which convincingly allowed Roman to play twins. From the jump scare at the beginning depicting Kevin’s murder right to the end and the potential sequel reveal, this one entertains from start to finish.

Double Double Trouble has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.

Double Double Trouble | Official Trailer

Lifetime