Keaton Is Magnificent Many Times over in 'Multiplicity'

"Multiplicity," starring Michael Keaton and Andie McDowell, is launched from a simple (yet unbelievable) premise. But it is Keaton's manic style and a tolerably clever script that make it fly.

The beginning of the movie is weighted down with some all-too-familiar problems. Keaton plays Doug Kinney, a construction worker unable to juggle an unforgiving job, the demands of his family and his own needs. Even as he struggles to make time for his kids, his wife (McDowell) wants to go back to work, putting even more of the day care burden on him. At work, his underlings are incompetent, his boss accepts no excuses and his despicable co-worker is all too happy to work nights and weekends.

Lo and behold, a kindly geneticist notices Kinney's plight and decides to help him--by cloning him. Uh huh. But the more cartoonish this movie gets--a coffee pot bubbles among the complicated looking test-tubes involved in the cloning process--the better it becomes. As Doug, and Doug, and Doug, and Doug try to solve all of the original's problems, they find that the logistics of their parallel existences cause more difficulties than they can handle.

Keaton excels at this type of frenzied, over-the-top comedy, and he's at his best when two or three of his manifestations volley the dialogue back and forth between them. Unfortunately, this does leave McDowell somewhat out of the loop; she's given the thankless role of the confused wife, struggling, crying and finally running away while Doug clumsily deals with his strange identity crisis.

The comic conceit of the confusion caused by look-alikes has been used everywhere from Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors to "The Patty Duke Show" to "Parent Trap." But the technology in "Multiplicity" is seamless, and Keaton does a good job of giving each of his xeroxes a distinct (if somewhat stereotyped) personality. There's the first, harried Doug, who loses serious likeability points for suggesting his wife quit her new job because even with two of him, he can't handle taking care of the kids. The second Doug, who takes over the construction job, becomes macho and tough. The third Doug is a sensitive, caring type who is worried about his inner child and obsessive about the proper way to foil-wrap meatloaf. The fourth Doug is, well, special, shaving his tongue and slurping pizza.

When the movie tries to step a little beyond its silliness, the theory is that the original Doug has a little of each of these in him, and he has to use this experience to find himself and so on. But there's really no need for the film to be anything but a fun, flaky little saunter into the wacky world of personal replication.