Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Reviews:

The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996)

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Apparently The Mirror Has Two Faces. One is the mirror’s formal, Sunday-go-to-meeting face, the other a knocking-around-the-house face. Sometimes it’s nice to just throw some sweats on your face and not care at all how it looks.

The Mirror Has Two Faces, directed by and starring Barbra Streisand, is the story of Barbra Streisand and how utterly fabulous she looks. There are ripples of plot to be seen here and there, but mostly it’s about Barbra Streisand and how inconceivably beautiful and well preserved she is. Jeff Bridges is in the film somewhere, but he is set decoration, a mere sconce lamp, there only to illuminate the transcendental magnificence of Barbra’s pulchritude. At least, that’s how Barbra had it planned. Personally I thought George Segal, as Jeff Bridges’s pal, looked even more radiant than she. He seems to keep himself in good shape, and his skin care regimen is obviously top-notch.

The film opens by introducing us to Gregory (Bridges), a handsome mathematics professor who finds sex a mere roadblock on the way to a meaningful relationship. He even shuns no-strings-attached sex with leggy math groupie Elle Macpherson. This fiction makes suspension of disbelief a Herculean task. That there are math groupies, I mean. Despite mountains of empirical evidence, it’s taken me many years to accept the fact that ‘80s hair-band Night Ranger had groupies. I can’t make the leap to mathematicians, not without hard data and plenty of counseling.

Gregory announces his warped and shameful no-sex policy in a personal ad in the paper. The respondent’s looks are not even an issue, as sex is out of the question. For all Greg cares, the love of his life could be a 57-year-old over-the-road trucker named Barry. (Women, please don’t allow yourself to think that because Gregory has evolved beyond the need for sex, there are men like him in the real world. It is purest fiction. Put it out of your mind.)

He ends up on a date with Rose (Streisand), arranged secretly by her beautiful older sister, Claire (Mimi Rogers). I’ll restate that last part: her beautiful older sister, played by Mimi Rogers. Now, Barbra Streisand was born at some time during the Taft administration and is at least 88 years older than Mimi Rogers. There’s no shame in being old (unless you’re one of those guys with those mandatory Old Guy Houndstooth Hats), but you tax your audience when you play more than a century younger than your actual age.

Gregory and Rose begin dating and, before long, he asks for her hand in marriage - with the proviso that they keep their marriage sexless. (“A needless redundancy,” I might say, if I were Alan King or Mrs. Roper.) The arrangement works pretty well. Gregory is happy, Rose relatively so. She even tries teaching the poor, sheltered dope about baseball, explaining batting averages while Jim Leyritz is at the plate. Though she does a fine job elucidating baseball statistics, she doesn’t even make an attempt to explain Jim Leyritz’s deliberately bizarre, almost hostile stance. He looks like Nureyev winding up to club a harp seal.

Anyway, after pressure from Rose, Gregory relents and agrees to give sex a try. It is disastrous - no better than the sex college football players can manage after drinking a case and half of St. Pauli Girl. She decides she can’t live under the current arrangement, so they agree to split for a while, easily agreeing that he can take all the books on set theory. While he’s away on a lecture tour, Barbra begins a remarkable metamorphosis in which she loses weight, gets a makeover, and buys a cheap dress. When Gregory returns he’s stunned to see that she’s six ounces lighter, has ugly poodle hair, and is, well, wearing a cheap dress. With her newfound confidence, she’s able to tell Gregory that she’s moved beyond him, that she needs to feel attractive and vivacious, and that she needs to devote more time shampooing with botanicals and tea tree oils. After spending several miserable weeks in which he can barely concentrate on Gauss’s gripping Disquisitiones Arithtneticae, Gregory decides he can’t live without her.

One of the frustrating things about the film is the tonal dissonance between the script and Streisand’s appearance. She’s supposed to be very unattractive and yet she’s unwilling to look even slightly rumpled. She was a fine-looking woman, 55 years old when the film was made. She should act her age - start getting used to the taste of Ensure and Feen-a-mint; get a start at buying the first of many crisp blazers and neat slacks; begin asking for discounts on bruised produce. This tarting about, playing roles that should go to Ally Sheedy, has got to stop.

The Mirror Has Two Faces is a fascinating glimpse into the febrile mind of a megalomaniacal lunatic - and it has a peppy theme song! Streisand finds it unthinkable to appear in front of a camera lens that hasn’t been covered with a number-ten can of petroleum jelly. Her fingernails have been crafted from solid blocks of pure bulletproof polycarbonate. She is bathed in a heavenly light at all times, giving one the unsettling feeling that she’s the target of an insecure alien abduction. I fear that she’s stepped completely off the beam, that soon she’ll begin bathing in the blood of virgins or that she’ll marry James Brolin, the surest path to utter madness. Next thing you know, Brolin will think he’s Ronald Reagan and the apocalypse will be near.

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© 2000 Michael J. Nelson. All rights reserved, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles & reviews. Mike Nelson is no relation to Lloyd Bridges and has never run low on air while hunting around under the sea.