Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

Unlimitedia Sick Product of a Sick System

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

moonspinner55 Reworking of the main gag in 1970's "Start the Revolution Without Me" has a rich couple from New York City, driving through a small southern town, checking into a bumpkin hospital where the wife delivers twins--two girls; at the same time, in the same befuddled hospital, a local woman also delivers twins--two girls. The joke, of course, is: one of the city babies is switched with one of the daughters from the farm family and, many years later, they all meet up at the Plaza Hotel. Bright, funny comedy, one of Bette Midler's better efforts for Touchstone, although it takes its time getting started. Once the action moves to the Plaza, it becomes less a vehicle for stars Midler and Lily Tomlin than a visual effects-driven farce with overtures to the 1930s. Tomlin's small town fussbudget is colorful, but her big city counterpart never takes shape, and she doesn't quite click with Midler (one may argue their characters are not related and therefore shouldn't click, but Tomlin's timing is very different from her co-star's, and she doesn't segue into brash slapstick comfortably). There's a great deal of incidental plotting revolving around the main action, with nutty characters continually popping up, but the jokes are freshest and funniest when director Jim Abrahams simply sets the camera on Bette Midler and lets her go. The editing is sloppy and abbreviates some of Midler's liveliest moments, yet Bette is very amusing when she's allowed to take charge. Fred Ward also appealing as a country rube who loves one or both of the Tomlins--although this pairing, too, lacks charisma (it's a plot device, like much of the rest of "Big Business"). *** from ****

FlashCallahan In a small town, two sets of identical twins are born in the same hospital on the same night. One pair to a poor local family and the other pair to a rich family passing through the small town . The nurse on duty mixes the twins by mistake unbeknown to the parents. Flash forward to the eighties, and the twins are about to cross paths following a business deal to close down a factory that has mutual connotations the both pairs of twins.....Its a Bette Midler vehicle for sure, and the back end of the eighties were just hit after hit for her. But the quality wasn't always there, and despite Midler and Tom,in being really good, it's not got the venom that her other films had, a really dark streak was needed in this.What we get is a running joke of the nice Tomlin/Midler talking to someone, and then the not so nice Tomlin/Midler talking to the same person, leaving the camera on said person looking highly confused.Its funny the first couple of times, but then the film begins to rely on that one joke.It's typically eighties fodder, high heels, big hair, and shoulder pads, featuring a brilliant song during the end credits.It would probably hold some nostalgia value to someone who saw it when it first came out, but for me, it's pretty average stuff.

vintkd "Big Business" is one of my favorite comedy from my childhood but to really understand its humor I could just today. Superstars of comedies from 80s Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin on the screen played several characters and done it perfect and very laughable. They were changing their images literally every second and looked very naturally. I like in this movie what everything happens very fast and dynamically and you don't boring no one minute. It's very important what humor in "Big Business" is very kind and not vulgar and therefore it's a perfect movie for evening watching with family. By the way I was nice surprised seen in this film an Italian actor Michele Placido, who I remember as Commissario Corrado Cattani from excellent old TV show "La piovra". He was a hero for me and my friends in my childhood. Then he was very serious and brutal but in "Big Business" he is incredibly funny and it's stunningly.

bellhollow This is one of those movies that has a lot of jokes and a lot of different relationships going on (two sets of identical twins with their significant others). I actually watch this film whenever it is on television and it just comes across as a no-brainer type movie without much to say. Just watch it and say "Ho-Hum." The backup actors to Tomlin and Midler actually have better lines to work with. Maybe the character of rich Midler needed to be super mean to make this more than a seven out of ten. But the show really never went anywhere but it had a candy bar ending which probably saved it for the rerun mill on television.