Rewatch Twins to see how important staying up to date is

We recently tried to re-watch the 1988 hit movie Twins. I say “tried” because we only got through 20 minutes before throwing in the towel.

The interesting thing is that Twins is actually a good movie. Arnie and Danny Devito are well cast, have chemistry and play their parts excellently. The movie also has a novel plot with several funny moments.

So why couldn’t we finish it? The problem is time. I said before that Twins is a good movie, but I should have said that when it was first released it was a good movie.

Most scenes in Twins feel too long, the soundtrack is mediocre and much of the dialogue unnecessary. The fields of script writing, film editing and sound production have all evolved and improved significantly over the last 32 years.

Imagine you simply cut out the scenes and dialogue that aged the worst. Cut say 25 minutes of footage. The running time would be reduced to 1h 22m. On the short side but not unacceptable. 

You could also remaster it in full HD and get the leading contemporary professionals to redo the soundtrack from scratch using latest best practices.

That movie would be 10 times more watchable than the original. This experience reminded me the importance of keeping up in any industry given how all fields inevitably advance over time.