Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (October 28, 2025)
Given his looks and generally sardonic demeanor, Alan Arkin always seemed better suited to second banana roles than to leads. Nonetheless, Arkin occasionally played the main part in movies and 1975’s Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins offers one of these.
Alcoholic DMV employee “Gunny” Rafferty lives an isolated and slovenly life in Southern California. He decides to make a change when he happens upon extroverted Country singer McKinley “Mac” Beachwood (Sally Kellerman) and her belligerent 15-year-old companion Rita “Frisbee” Sykes (Mackenzie Phillips).
Initially Mac and Frisbee force Gunny to take them to New Orleans at the end of a pistol, but he eventually agrees without coercion. This leads on a complicated drive that Gunny may eventually regret.
Unsurprisingly, this brings a road trip movie with all the usual factors. Twins lacks anything I’d call an actual plot, as it just follows Gunny, Mac and Frisbee on their merry way east from California.
For the most part, this means the three leads encounter a series of wacky situations with wacky strangers in a variety of locations. While not a creative framework for a movie, this leaves open room for entertainment.
Add to that a strong cast, as in addition to Arkin, Kellerman and Phillips, we find professionals such as Alex Rocco, Charles Martin Smith, Harry Dean Stanton and some recognizable character actors. With all that talent, Twins feels like it should become a winner.
Alas, the movie doesn’t justify the performers involved. A loose and largely silly affair, nothing much evolves to maintain viewer interest.
Part of the problem stems from the basic unlikability of Mac and especially Frisbee. Actually, I should applaud Kellerman and Phillips because they don’t try to sugarcoat their roles to make them seem endearing.
However, I get the impression the filmmakers want us to care about Frisbee and Mac, but we don’t. Mac comes across like a flighty manipulator and Frisbee remains consistently abrasive.
Though essentially cast as his usual gruff curmudgeon, Arkin gets more room to explore his role as Gunny. He becomes more sympathetic and likable than his female passengers but he seems like too much of a sucker and a drip to turn into a worthwhile protagonist.
Not that drippy suckers don’t exist, of course, and they can become the focal point of good movies. However, the general feebleness of Twins means that Gunny never becomes an especially interesting character.
Of course, as the three leads progress on their journey, we find the expected revelations about their lives. These moments of exposition inevitably exist to attempt to humanize the cartoony roles.
Which they do to some degree, but only in a cardboard manner. The backstory elements we find seem so trite that they don’t work.
All of this leaves us with a basic road trip film that never finds a groove. Even with a good cast, it seems so aimless and cliché that it becomes a chore to watch.
