Among Hollywood's hoariest cliches, and often fodder for standup comedians, is that of the "evil twin."
In "Twin Town," an extremely uneven and ultimately disappointing dark revenge comedy from Welsh actor/writer/director Kevin Allen, there's some speculation that Julian and Jeremy Lewis, the two lead characters, aren't even twins. And their intentions are not necessarily evil. But the duo is certainly bad.
From petty car theft to snorting glue, there's little these two won't do. And for awhile, their criminal antics actually buoy the flimsy material. But when "Twin Town" eventually changes gears from mean-spirited comedy to even meaner-spirited drama, it deflates faster than you can say Hindenberg.
Also, the film bears more than a passing resemblance in tone and style to "Trainspotting" (it was produced by Andrew MacDonald and Danny Boyle, who created the latter), but "Twin Town" isn't nearly as good as that movie.
As things begin, the duo (played by real-life brothers Llyr Evans and Rhys Ifans), have been wreaking havoc in Swansea, their industrially based hometown. They also manage to irk Terry (Dougray Scott), a crooked cop, by sideswiping his car with one of their stolen vehicles during a high-speed joy ride.
Oblivious to the carnage are the pair's clueless parents, Fatty and Jean (Huw Ceredig and Di Botcher, respectively), who are convinced that their boys are just misunderstood and picked on.
But when Fatty is injured on the job, the twins unsuccessfully attempt to extort money from his employer, the shady businessman Bryn Cartwright (William Thomas).
Instead of paying for Fatty's hospital bill, though, he sics Terry on the twins, and things quickly degenerate into a game of one-upsmanship, as both sides play vicious pranks that involve public humiliation, animal cruelty and ultimately, murder.
And degenerate might be the perfect way to describe the film, which has no moral center and can't manage to create any sympathetic characters. Consequently, it's really hard to care what happens, unless disgusting "jokes" are your idea of high humor.
Of course, it doesn't help that most of the dialogue is spoken in such a thick Welsh accent that many audiences will need subtitles just to understand it (except for the constant stream of expletives).
To their credit, most of performers try. But Evans and Ifans (the Welsh spelling of their last name) are ciphers, who never reveal anything about their characters and whose expressions are limited to a series of creepy smirks.
"Twin Town" is rated R for considerable profanity, drug use, a few vulgar jokes and gags, sex, nudity, violence and two scenes of torture.