I guess the best way to describe The Mirror Has Two Faces is "an homage to Barbra Streisand". She is the producer, the director and the star. Those three facts should tell you something about this film. Remember what happened when Mel Gibson took control of both sides of the camera in Braveheart? Or Jody Foster directing herself in Nell or Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible? It usually seems that when the star is director, he or she seem to forget how to call "cut" and we see rather a little too much of the star, and said star becomes even larger than larger than life.

        But Streisand takes narcissism to all new heights in this wallowy piece of schmaltz. Not only is she the star, but when her character, the ugly duckling college professor Rose Morgan, blossoms into a beautiful swan, the swan IS Barbra Streisand. To me, this was hysterically funny. There she is in all her glory, exactly as millions of drag queens portray her throughout the world. She seems to forget the dowdy college professor role she purports to play in the first half of this movie, and unashamedly idolizes herself. So, I'm not really sure which mirror had two faces in this movie, or why, because every face was Barbra's.

        And never have I seen such blatant character bashing as in The Mirror Has Two Faces. Every character has a major flaw, expect Barbra. Her sister is a horrid tramp, her brother in law is a lecherous creep and her husband is just plain stupid. No one told him that effective teaching comes when you look at the class rather than the chalk board. And he looks at Barbara in total awe when she knew that nine was a prime number because it was divisible by three. I bet she is the only professor at Columbia with such mathematical insight. Then there is Rose's mother, shamefully egocentric and constantly destroying the self image of her poor daughter.

        But it is the mother, played with pure elegance by Lauren Bacall, who actually offers the only worthwhile moment in the whole movie. Barbra asks her what it was like when she was young, being beautiful and having everyone look at you with adoration. Bacall's eyes mist over as she is transported back to her glory days. I went there too, seeing her through the eyes of Humphrey Bogart in Key Largo. After what seems like an eternity of reminiscing, she says "It was wonderful" ... I think I shed a tear.

        Which was just as well, since getting through the rest of the movie became increasingly more painful as the minutes dragged on. There are the expected transformation scenes and the adoration scenes and the revenge scenes, which finally lead to a most pathetic ending. Thank God "Nessun Dorma" a la Luciano Pavarotti can take a few bumps, because Barbra almost kills one of opera's finest moments.

        Home || Complete list of reviews