It happened in The Parent Trap, Rain Man, Twins, Double Impact, The Addams Family, Star Wars, Austin Powers and every soap opera ever created. It’s inevitable: long-lost siblings will eventually find each other.
People Like Us brings together estranged half-siblings Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks after thirty-odd years of having no idea that one another existed. A story like this, which has been done so many times before, can go a few different ways. It can feel like an uninspired rehash or a freshly genuine take on a well-tread, fertile ground. The first trailer for the movie keeps the line blurry.
Some aspects of the trailer below lean towards melodramatic and predictable. Pine’s character Sam has come into a large piece of his father’s inheritance that he is entrusted with delivering to his brand new sister Frankie (Banks). However, Sam is in a good deal of debt, and keeps his sister in the dark about the money and their blood relation, instead just acting as a creepy stranger with an undue interest in her friendship. It’s hard to tell from the video whether or not the film itself will escape the cliches inherent in this kind of plot and will find something original and authentic, but there is definitely potential.
People Like Us also features Olivia Wilde, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jon Favreau. Pine reteams with Star Trek writer Alex Kurtzman on this movie (incidentally, the long-lost siblings thing also happened in Star Trek V…but that’s enough examples).
