While Lindsay Lohan was once capable of rendering audiences sympathetic toward her character before she became a cokehead/lush/TMZ darling, she managed to make us fall for the perspective of “twins” (both played by LiLo, in a show of the most versatility she could ever muster) Annie Parker and Hallie James, who conspire to get their parents back together after unearthing that they’ve been separated at birth while at summer camp. As Nancy Meyers’ superior remake of the original The Parent Trap, her usual methods are employed, which means that there must always be an undercutting, manipulative female shrew at play in the form of a younger love interest (don’t say women aren’t misogynists, too).
This time around it’s “26-year-old” Meredith Blake (Elaine Hendrix), whose bubble of contentment in her devious plan to make Napa vineyard (miraculously preserved during the epic wildfire of 2017) owner Nick Parker (Dennis Quaid)–and his property–all hers is burst when “Hallie” returns from camp at the end of the summer. That Nick is considerably much older does not seem to register with him in terms of sending up a red flag regarding Meredith’s possible gold digging tendencies. Then again, people failed to take into account that she was merely trying to build on her own bank account, a successful publicist in her own right (which is how she came to be involved in a “whirlwind romance” with Nick) with an insatiable drive to be the best. Thus, she was not conventionally write-offable as a conniving bitch only in it for the money. No, in fact, Meredith truly does love Nick, citing to Annie as Hallie, “He is exactly the kind of man I always planned on marrying.” Meticulous to a fault, even with regard to what she wants in a person she’s going to let bang the body attached to her perfect coif, Meredith has no room in her schemes for not just one, but two Machiavellian daughters–in point of fact, the true antagonists in the film to giving the happy ending that would have been much more evolved: Nick’s marriage to Meredith instead of his return to his first love, Elizabeth (Natasha Richardson). But because we are so often conditioned to believe that first love is the purest–therefore best–we as an audience have frequently tended toward rooting for the unhealthier outcome (this also includes wanting Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake to get back together).
Meredith, so full of life and new information to give Nick (especially with regard to how to better improve his business through the correct channels of publicity), would have greatly enriched his life in a way that Elizabeth, stuffy middle-aged Brit that she is, never could. Yet by sheer virtue of being Annie and Hallie’s biological (thus, according to “law,” more nurturing) mother, she wins the battle against Meredith instantaneously. Of course, even if the twins had given Meredith a real chance, she was never going to be “into it.” She’s far too driven–actually going places in life–to be interested in the likes of children, the ultimate mac daddies of selfishness, which is why it’s rich that Meredith gets accused of being so for wanting a little goddamn peace and quiet for herself and Nick to actually enjoy the still fresh novelty of boning in various cellars throughout the vineyard.
As Annie delivers the reports of Meredith’s “awfulness” (a.k.a. possessing “the sin” of a woman who expresses herself freely and knows what she wants) to Hallie abroad in London, the two gradually devise a strategy to oust her permanently from their lives. Well, not so much a strategy as the simple banking on the knowledge of her utter contempt and disgust for children–particularly ones that deprive her of her rightful dick penetration. All it will take is one test of her temper on a camping trip to end it all. Because even worse than Annie and Hallie and all the cunt rag entitled little girls they represent is Nick himself, who doesn’t have the courage to stand up to the products of his narcissism and say, “You know what, I do choose Meredith. Because I’m never going to get another pussy as tight as this. And I have to seize upon my happiness when it reveals itself.” Instead, when presented with the inevitable ultimatum, “It’s me or them,” Nick unflappably returns, “Them.” Oh Jesus, how goddamn moralistic. An utter cliche of the forced sense of duty a parent is supposed to have for their child when, in truth, everyone else can objectively see that they’re assholes except the one who spawned them. That would be too much acceptance of blame for bringing another useless, flapping maw into the world.
What’s more, Meredith was not in the wrong to lay her cards out on the table with a final warning. If anything, it showed that she was the most genuine, in the end, out of anyone. For it would have been more diabolical for her to scheme as underhandedly as the daughters and continue to pretend to go along with “liking” them when pushed to her brink (the lizard, waking up in the lake, etc.) in the cruel environment of nature, only to treat them like shit once she had the legal clout that would have come after saying, “I do.”
No, Meredith was just trying to fulfill her ambitions both professional and romantic–a now anachronistic version of a determined 26-year-old that we will never know again in the era called “I Can’t Adult”–and instead of being praised for them, she was reprimanded for not wanting to play June Fucking Cleaver to “brats” that didn’t even stem from her own vag. Because Meredith would never be foolish enough to spawn.
And, on a final note, let it be said that little girls most especially know what the fuck they’re doing when it comes to manipulating Daddy–and honestly, we all know that “baby voice” is a put-on past the age of five. So whatever Nick, have fun with your boring wife and your daughters that society prevents you from fucking. Meredith, at the very least, didn’t compromise her feelings or beliefs for the sake of not being deemed a monster for rightly despising kids for the complete psychopaths they are.
