![\"Book](\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/multiplicity.jpg\")
You’re right, gentle reader; I am watching a lot of films lately. In the olden days, I only got to watch a film or two every couple of months. The exception was VBS week, when I could watch one or two films every night for five nights. This summer, though, my beautiful wife has taken our boys to an amusement park once or twice a week (wearing out season passes) which gives me a chance to watch one or more. In addition to VBS week, where they volunteered as my boys have aged out of the program itself (already?) Also, I’m watching a film or so a week with my boys. So I am getting so many films in that I’ll want to take a break sometime and, I don’t know, read a book<\/em>. Likely a book based on a television program or a movie.<\/p>\nSome blog I read mentioned Multiplicity<\/em> recently, so I watched it on an evening when I was looking for a comedy to fill the VBS time. The film is from 1996, but it’s a bit of a throwback to 1980s comedies (and some shades of Mr. Mom<\/em>). Michael Keaton plays Doug Kinney, a man burning his candle at both ends and the middle–he’s got a taxing job, and he’s trying to keep up with his wife and children and perhaps some hobbies. While supervising a job at a research facility, he encounters a man who offers to create a clone so that Michael Keaton can share duties with him. So he does; the clone gets to handle all the work part of Kinney’s life. He finds that his family life is also taking up a lot of time, leaving him no time for golf, so he creates another clone for homemaking. The first clone then creates a clone of himself, but it turns out to be simple-minded–a bad copy of a copy. So the three clones, each with a different personality aspect of the original, have some lojinks–adventures not up to hijinks<\/em> as Kinney reflects upon his life. He takes some time to learn to sail and then takes a day to sail to Catalina Island on a boat with Bill Murray’s brother and the love interest from Happy Gilmore<\/em>; during that time away, his wife (Andie MacDowell, aka Rita from Groundhog Day<\/em>) rekindles her romance with her husband. Or his clones, successively (not all at once).<\/p>\n Yeah, that last bit kind of squicked me out a bit.<\/p>\n So it’s amusing at times; it’s not a laugh-out-loud funny film, but it’s a comedy for grownups. According to Wikipedia<\/a>, it only made about half of its budget back at the box office, so clearly, adult comedies would be a no-go in the 21st century.<\/p>\n So I’m happy to have seen it to hopefully retain something from it for trivia nights, should they ever again happen.<\/p>\n