Conceptually, Twitches feels like a variant on the young modern witch comedy a la Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996-2003) or Charmed (1998-2006) having been reconceptualised as an Olsen Twins film or the body of modern airhead teen girl dramas that evolved from Clueless (1995). The main plot set-up has been crimped from Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper (1881) about two doubles living lives at opposite ends of the socio-economic spectrum. (Although most of the basic idea has been borrowed from the set-up of Sister, Sister, which also had the Mowry sisters living on different socio-economic strata and meeting up by accident at the mall). Although, after being introduced, this background is forgotten about fifteen minutes in and the rest of the film is focused on the twins’ airheaded natter. The Darkness and the kingdom of Coventry are utterly generic, while the identity of the villain has a signpost virtually pointing over his head.

The Mowry twins will probably never convince anybody they are good actresses. They have a natural breeziness together but little in the way of acting ability. Alas, fairly much the whole of Twitches consists of much giggly inanity involving the twins running around – their initial meeting consists of an extended slapstick sequence with them continually almost bumping into one another in a department store and the confusion of bystanders. The story about the girls discovering their magical powers and their inheritance as the rulers of a fantasy kingdom seems of less importance to the film than the Mowry’s airheadedness. Eventually, this ongoing barrage of teenage girl airhead natter starts to become extremely annoying. One has no particular problem with teenage girls as character but the fact that the film substitutes a fascination with fashion, looking cool and being hip as more important than their seemingly even having brains in their head becomes intensely exasperating.

The humour is facile. There are a number of scenes where the twins use their powers to do things like cause the drink of a loudmouth in a restaurant to explode in his face or a group of construction workers that wolf-whistle at them to suddenly become cross-dressed. Pat Kelly as the male servant secretly aiding them is used as a comic fall guy throughout – the twins cause a tin of paint falling from a ladder to freeze in mid-air and then to unfreeze and fall on him; and when they do the cross-dressing spell on the construction workers, Pat Kelly for some reason ends up in a gorilla suit and a slip.

Director Stuart Gillard and the Mowry twins reunited for a sequel Twitches Too (2007).

Within genre material, director Stuart Gillard has also made the Disney tv movie Return of the Shaggy Dog (1987), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993), the Mars mission comedy RocketMan (1997), the monster tv mini-series Creature (1998), the Disney Channel films The Scream Team (2002), the tv movie remake of The Initiation of Sarah (2006), WarGames: The Dead Code (2008) and the tv mini-series adaptation of Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld (2010).