I will win first place in America & all over the Globe viewing this movie more than any other person on Earth. First saw movie in small theatre I'm Milford Mass. Have seen movie over 1300 times since that day way in Milford Soo many times. At 66 years it is my obsession. Love it too death. God bless Hayley Mills.

It is hard to see or discuss the 61 version without comparing it to the second version with Lindsay Lohan that came almost 40 years later.So let's do this in reverse and start with the later version (although if you have seen neither, I advise you start with the earlier one.) The second version is a polished gem, about as slick as it gets, and while the supporting cast is solid, that film is 99% about Lohan and how cute she is. In other words, a star turn.This film is not so clearcut. At first you think it is about Mills (who, typical of the era, never provides any sort of backstory for her clearly Brit accent) but, as the film progresses, you suddenly realize that Mills is merely part of a larger ensemble cast.An ensemble cast that includes Brian Keith (about as stereotyped as a "dad" you can find in that era) and Maureen O'Hara.O'Hara, on closer examination, is not merely the "mother" in the piece, she is the star. She lights up all her scenes in a way that is obvious only when you consider the scenes she does not appear in.When the film takes a bold run at pure situation comedy (about the halfway point) it is O'Hara that makes that work, too.In short, this is a film which is neither as perfect nor as polished as its successor, but still has an awful lot to offer.Recommended.

... is anybody else but me disturbed by the entire premise? Two people divorce, for reasons never spoken in the film, and they literally divide the child in half ala Solomon. One baby of their identical twin girls goes to dad (Brian Keith), and the other to mom (Maureen O'Hara). Not only in the first ten odd years of their lives does neither parent ever see (you don't know if they inquire via the other parent) the other child, they deny to both children the knowledge that they have a sibling! What judge would sign off on this deal? Wouldn't grandparents intervene or try to sneak a peak at the other grandchild in all of this time? Disney seems to have created a world where none of these questions are asked and the parents are free to write up any child custody agreements they care to arrange in a vacuum.Into this rather bizarre arrangement comes a summer camp to mess everything up. The two children end up at the same camp at the same time! Again, big screw up by the parents. One has been raised in upper crust Boston, the other on a ranch in Monterrey. Thus they have nothing in common but their looks. They cause trouble for each other with their pranks, until things escalate to the point that they are punished by being forced to live together in the same cabin in the woods. There they figure out they are sisters. So, now that they are each curious about their other parent, they decide turnabout is fair play and go back home to the parent they have never seen with each masquerading as the other.The thing that upends their plans is that dad is getting ready to remarry. Now every synopsis I have seen describes bride-to-be Vicki as a golddigger, but let's face it. It's not like Gerry Hall is marrying Rupert Murdock here. Dad is not that rich and not that old. He could live a long time and he could go broke. It was just a plot device to get the girls to reveal their switcheroo and thus get mom to fly to California and get the parents talking again, and to have an excuse for the girls not to like their stepmother to be, whose only problem seems to be that she is just not the outdoors type to be living on a ranch. And let's face it, the girls wouldn't like their new stepmom if she was Mary Poppins because she would be busting up their dreams of a reunified family.So how does this end? I'll let you watch and find out. I will say in the film's defense that it has a great two-tiered script with slapstick and adolescent humor for the kids and plenty of whimsy for the adults. The sentiment is genuine and not saccharine and the veterans in the cast give it plenty of gravitas, and kudos to Hayley Mills for making me forget that I wasn't looking at two different little girls. Just don't THINK too hard, because it ruins everything.

Love the pranks the twins played on each other, Hayley Mills gave a lovely musical performance towards the end, and it's also amusing to see her throwing a tantrum. So much for the "trap", the "parent" part though, is pretty horrible. Their dad seems to be the worst dad on earth, probably the worst man too. How can any man not fall in love with MAUREEN O HARA the first time he sees her(after 13 years)?? She has to actually get out of her way to trick them to break their engagement?? And for a man who abandoned her and separated her from her child years ago (I assumed), let her kid be slapped by a stranger and did nothing about it, not to mention he's barely handsome and has no personality what so ever at all. That's just ridiculous. She should have been still mad at him, and he had too crawl on his knees to win her back. Actually she and the kids deserve better.