Twenty years ago today, the movie “Big Business” opened in theaters. Being an identical twin and raised in a small town in West Virginia, this movie holds some special meaning to me. I’m not proud of this fact, but that’s just the way it is. But to celebrate this milestone, I am writing a quick review of the movie.
This farce stars Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler both playing dual roles of identical twins switched at birth. The movie opens, inexplicably, to an overly-loud soundtrack playing “42nd Street”. We see the limousine of a rich, snooty New York couple traveling in West Virginia to look at a beach house they are wanting to purchase. Of course, West Virginia is landlocked and doesn’t have a beach, per se, but ignore that — there are bigger plot holes than that in this film, and if you try to analyze it rationally, your head will explode.
Anyway, while driving through the small town of Jupiter Hollow, the rich wife goes into labor, and has to have the baby at the local hospital. At first, in a plot contrivance worthy of, well, many bad 80’s movies, the mother is initally denied treatment at the hospital. For some reason, the owner of the local HollowMade furniture factory decides who is treated at the company hospital, so the rich New York guy buys the furniture company, allowing his wife to use the local hospital. At about the same time, a poor local couple comes in to have their baby. Well, as 80’s comedy fate would have it, both mothers give birth to identical twin girls. But due to the confusing hijinx of the nurse, she mixes up the babies, and puts one New York girl and one West Virginia girl in each crib. Why nobody thought to double-check this, I don’t know. Still, if they had, there wouldn’t be a movie, so let’s not dwell on that. The New York couple decides to name their daughters Rose and Sadie, and the West Virginia dad, overhearing this suggestion, decides to name his chillun’ Rose and Sadie, too. I know what you are thinking. “This sounds hilarious! Is there more movie, or is that it?” You are in luck. There is much more to come.
Fast forward, oh…, 30 odd years into the future. The New York couple are dead, but their daughters, Rose and Sadie Shelton are running their company, Moramax. I don’t know if this was a dig at Miramax, or if it was some kind of attempt at a generic name for a big company (“More – a – Max”. More…max…you get the idea…it’s a big company). Well, Bette Midler plays Sadie, who is a ruthless, conniving corporate type — the very picture of her departed mother. Lily Tomlin plays Rose, a flighty, simple-minded woman who isn’t comfortable in a board room and instead longs for a garden and a dog named Duke. Get the idea here? The premise of the movie is that “nature” completely trumps “nurture” when it comes to determining your personality. Still, I think they take it a bit too far, as if New Yorkers have “evolved” a natural instinct for ruthlessness, while West Virginian’s are naturally drawn to…quilts, I guess.
Well, Sadie is planning for a big meeting with the shareholders of Moramax, and she has the perfect idea to make them all a bunch of money. Apparently, Moramax has a small holding in Jupiter Hollow, West Virginina. A little furniture store named HollowMade that makes porch swings and rocking chairs by hand. Sadie wants to sell the furniture to an Italian developer so that he can strip mine the area. For the unitiated, strip mining is a very ecologically destructive form of mining, and it is very unpopular in West Virginia. Well, that isn’t exactly true. It is an unpopular means of mining to the people of West Virginia, but it is VERY popular to some coal companies in West Virginia, ’cause it kinda happens a lot. Rose is against this strategy, because she has an unnatural affinity to these idyllic, picturesque settings. Still, Sadie’s the “in charge” twin, so what she says, goes.
Meanwhile, back in Jupiter Hollow, Rose Ratliff is organizing her union and other backwoods bumpkin buddies into rising up against the evil Moramax who want to get rid of their Hollowmade furniture company. However, her sister Sadie isn’t much interested in saving this area, but instead longs for the bright lights of the big city. This country mouse, city mouse crap carries on throughout the entire movie, and becomes increasingly annoying. Rose is raising money to go to New York to confront the fiends at Moramax, and Sadie excitedly tags along. In a useless plot point, Rose’s paramour Roone Dimmick is a champion putt-putt golfer who is counting on Rose to cheer him on at the mini-golf masters, but she neglects to tell him about her trip and instead exits the holler’ in the wee hours of the morning.
I’m going to skip the rest of the details of this movie. In short, both sets of sisters end up in the Plaza hotel, and they keep almost running into each other but never quite pulling it off. When they finally meet, they don’t even go into detail as to how the mix-up took place, but just quickly mention that the nurse “must” have got confused. The girls take this extremely life-altering event in stride, and pretty much forget that it happened for the rest of the movie (admittedly, 10 minutes). The ruthless Sadie Shelton is ganged up on by the two Roses and country Sadie, who lock her into a closet. Country Sadie speaks to the investors and urges them not to get rid of the Hollowmade furniture company. The investors get angry, but city Rose steps up and defends the decision, and inexplicably, the investors agree to lose money. This plot point is ridiculous. Even dumber, each of the sisters has a love interest, and they inexplicably end up with a twin they weren’t expecting. For example, in a strange turn of events, Roone ends up with the city Rose instead of the country Rose, who ends up with Michael Gross from Family Ties. I’m not making this up. The girls each leave the Plaza hotel one at a time with their true loves, to the overpowering strains of “Higher Love” by Steve Winwood.
This isn’t a great movie, but I have to admit having a soft place in my heart for this movie. I can’t defend it, and it is quite annoying, but I remember watching it in the theater as a kid, and it will always be one of those classic 80’s movies to me. If you like “separated at birth” comedies, or “identical twins almost running into each other” comedies, give this movie a chance. Sure, you’ll be disappointed, but you’ll get to see a young Seth Green, an old Mary Gross, a thin Edward Herrmann, and a (now dead) Roy Brocksmith, the character actor I will always remember as the creepy guy who threatened to lobotomize Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall. Have a blast!
