Multiplicity (1996)
Directed by Harold Ramis
Doug Kinney (Michael Keaton) attempts to simplify his life by cloning himself, only to find that duplicate selves create more trouble than they prevent.
Doug Kinney (Michael Keaton), stressed and overworked, finds that he hasn’t enough time to dedicate himself fully to either his family or his career. While overseeing a construction project at a lab, Doug meets a geneticist who quickly recognizes that Doug needs more time to relax. Dr. Leeds claims that he can create time by “xeroxing” Doug, and after a brief hesitation, Doug agrees. His clone, Number Two, is physically and mentally identical to Doug, but as their futures diverge, Two begins to develop his own ideas and memories based on his individual experiences. Indeed, Two – created to take over Doug’s workload – is distinguishable from the original Doug by his brusque, business-like attitude. Doug imagines that with this new freedom, he will be able to indulge in more quality time with his family, but after encouraging his wife to go back to work, he finds that his “free” time is fully absorbed by family obligations. Doug then creates Three to do the household chores, leaving him free to pursue hobbies like golf and sailing. As Doug pulls away from his family and work responsibilities, the clones begin to develop desires that conflict with Doug’s expectations for them. Doug soon realizes that the clones cannot fulfill his responsibilities, and keeping his family means learning to balance the various roles he has foisted onto his clones.
When Two is first created, he awakes as a fully grown man and is convinced that he is the original Doug, because he possesses not only the same physical form but the same memories as well. This ludicrous conceit perpetuates the commonplace fallacy that cloning would result in adult copies of an original, memories and all. In the film, Two quickly develops a distinct personality with desires at times contrary to Doug’s. Two and Three – the “work” and “home” Dougs, respectively – each exhibit personality traits most advantageous to their assigned roles. This may be because, being immersed in one specific role, they each only exercise a portion of the full range of traits inherited from the original Doug. Alternately, the purpose behind each of their creations might alter in some way the cloned product. The fact that the clones have individual desires raises questions about what rules should apply to them, or how much control Doug should have over their behavior. Does Doug have the right to dictate their actions because he is responsible for their creation? Two claims he is not a “genie in a lamp to be ordered around,” and this assertion seems to hold merit because his personality – if not DNA – differs from Doug’s. Two’s personhood is foregrounded when he clones himself to make Four, who is described as a “smudged photocopy”; Doug resists the idea that Two should be able to make this mentally “inferior” copy of himself, largely because this would mean that Doug is losing control over his own DNA. The question, then, is whether Doug forfeits sole rights to his DNA when creating Two, or if he in some ways still controls Two’s essence and thereby can dictate what Two can do with his genes.
Evaluation: The confusion caused by the cloning causes some laughs, but these are based largely on the stereotypical roles Doug adopts in his various clone forms. While the movie occasionally slips into the ludicrous – particularly the slobbering clone Four and the scientific process through which Doug’s clones emerge fully developed – the movie can be enjoyable if watched for the comedy and not the application of cloning technologies.
– Natalie Champ