Multiplicity

Both assuredly funny without being forced, and smart without being smug, this is one comedy that deserves to go forth and, indeed, multiply. Read full review

The picture provides hilarious complications to the arithmetic mayhem and will be one of the strongest performers in the second half of the summer, its inventive edge standing up to the barrage of flashier effects pics. Read full review

A finely performed, breezily directed, very funny comedy. [17 July 1996, p.33]

As silly as Multiplicity is, there is an adult sensibility at work here. The movie gets some of its biggest laughs when the clones, one after the other, proceed to break rule number one: No clone nooky. There's nothing explicit about the sexual shenanigans, but the duplicates' respective dalliances with the missus serve as the basis for much of the comedy. [17 July 1996, p.E04]

Director Harold Ramis, who managed to stop time in the sunny comic masterpiece "Groundhog Day," tries a different tack in this lesser though nonetheless hilarious caper. Read full review

Directed by Harold Ramis and starring Michael Keaton at his most satisfying, "Multiplicity" is the latest film to benefit from the unprecedented visual miracles that special effects can now produce. It is also one more example of a picture where technical inventiveness outstrips the pedestrian story line it's meant to animate. [17 July 1996, p.F1]

Watching the film, I enjoyed a lot of it, especially Keaton's permutations on the theme of himself. But I wondered why the possibilities weren't taken to greater comic extremes. Read full review

The jokes, which are frequent and frequently successful, make this motion picture worth sitting through, even though, at nearly two hours, it runs on for far too long. For those who are just looking for a movie that scores high on the feel-good comedy scale, Multiplicity is a can't- miss choice. In the end, however, I couldn't help wishing that Ramis had tried for something a little more ambitious, rather than settling for a multiplicity of laughs without much genuine substance. Read full review

Multiplicity satisfies the need for a dumb summer comedy while remaining fairly smart. Read full review

While Keaton is many things, he is not Jim Carrey. Which, from Keaton's standpoint, is probably a relief. [17 July 1996, p.25]

My hope is that if they do a sequel, they focus on No. 4. Love the way he carries pizza wedges in his wallet [17 July 1996]

But the movie really just sort of peters out rather than reaching a sublime point. In "Groundhog Day," there was an exquisite moment where the wonderfully horrid Bill Murray actually regained contact with his humanity and rejoined his species. No such thing occurs in "Multiplicity"; the movie just staggers toward a point where it's gone on long enough to do everybody the favor of ending it. Send out the writers. [17 July 1996]

Seamless, funny and startling. Anybody who thinks Keaton always does tiny variations on the same sardonic character - making him a bit more tight-lipped, say, when donning a Batsuit - will be surprised by the variety of his skills here. [19 July 1996, p.3E]

Despite the obvious potential for comic disaster, the results are only intermittently amusing. Keaton's Kinney is such a selfish, lemon-lipped wet blanket, you can't help wishing he'd been diminished a little with each cloning, until there was nothing left of him at all. Read full review

Ramis’ talented, underused SCTV colleague Eugene Levy makes a brief, welcome appearance as a nuttily dim cement contractor, but he’s a zany interlude in an otherwise muted, unzany tale. Read full review

Multiplicity weaves such an uninteresting plot around its bland, generic principals that it rarely reaches the absurdist heights its premise demands. Read full review

Unfortunately, in trying to rein in the material and impose some kind of closure, the film-makers plump for an inadequate, bourgeois sit-com mode and the movie evaporates before your eyes. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, and hats off to Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton, Michael Keaton and - very funny in a supporting turn - Michael Keaton. Read full review

The early scenes are amusing and true to life. Read full review

Multiplicity is a pleasant comedy, in the blandest sense of that adjective. It's what you call a billboard movie - a quick-pitch concept easily advertised with snappy star images, flat in its execution and merely a passing distraction to an audience. [17 July 1996, p.3D]

By the fourth clone, played as a babbling simpleton, Keaton has exhausted the gimmick and the audience. I’d trade a dozen Dougs for one Beetlejuice. Read full review

The special effects are impressive, but they don’t add up to a movie. Read full review

It's not easy to sit through the movie spawned by this notion, though, proving once again that a picture can be simultaneously high in concept and low in entertainment value. [18 July 1996]

A turgid, overlong comedy. [19 July 1996, p.3E]

These elements fail to rescue Multiplicity from its moronic plot devices, orchestrated by husband-and-wife writing team Chris Miller (National Lampoon's Animal House) and Mary Hale. Despite my better judgment, each movie with Andie MacDowell makes me think that she'll have improved her acting skills. Unfortunately, Multiplicity proves me wrong once again. Read full review

How to quadruple your fun: stay home. [17 July 1996, p.2D]