This modernization of the classic adventure The Prisoner of Zenda scales the Ruritanian romance down for children and adds a baseball subtext. It sounds more interesting than it plays--and it doesn't even sound very interesting.
The founder of Berkeley's high-tech Zenda Corporation dies and leaves controlling interest to his motherless 14-year-old son Rudy (Jonathan Jackson), computer prodigy and programmer of the company's revolutionary new Turbo 2000 PC. Rudy's grasping Uncle Michael (William Shatner), also on the board
of directors, resents the youth's ascendancy, especially when the kid and his grownup allies Wooley (Jay Brazeau) and Zapt (Don S. Davis) oppose Michael's scheme to downsize and send as many jobs as possible to China. As a shareholders meeting looms, Michael plans to oust the boy from power by
having a trio of dumb lugs seize Rudy and force him to sign over control of Zenda. The kidnappers take the lad deep into the woods and send Wooley and Zapt a phony ransom note, but it doesn't take the two long to figure out Michael is behind it all. Fortunately they notice Oliver Gillis (Jonathan
Jackson again), batter for an LA high school baseball team in town for a championship. Though ignorant and shy of computers, Oliver looks exactly like Rudy, and the men talk him into posing as the missing CEO to fool the shareholders. Oliver/Rudy's sudden athletic prowess charms longtime classmate
Fiona (Katharine Isobel) and earns the enmity of Rudy's arrogant jock cousin Douglas (Richard Lee Jackson). But Oliver still stumbles badly through the shareholder intro of the Zenda Turbo 2000--until the last-minute entrance of the real Rudy, who escaped his captors and got a ride with the
police. Armed with evidence of Michael's duplicity, Rudy forces his uncle off the board. Back in his rightful uniform, Oliver gets the satisfaction of a winning hit off Douglas, his opposing pitcher in The Big Game. To cover all bases, Oliver and Rudy pretend to be cousins.
In-jokes abound in DOUBLE PLAY, from a book read by Michael which is written by "Gordon Gekko" (Michael Douglas's character in 1987's WALL STREET) to many Star Trek references made as a nod to guest-star Shatner. For his part, the former Captain Kirk hams unrewardingly as the cigar-chomping
villain. Jonathan Jackson is handsome but colorless in his dual role. Otherwise, the whole enterprise plods along with very little drive or energy, its swashbuckler source material bleached of just about everything that made Anthony Hope's story fun in previous, more faithful screen adaptations
(which stretch all the way back to the early silent era in 1914). There's just no point to this rendition, however, aside from the feeble protest of layoffs and corporate restructuring, and a minor HOME ALONE riff in Rudy outwitting the lunkhead stooges. DOUBLE PLAY premiered in the USA on the
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