Jeremy Herbert Says Don’t Forget: Three Identical Strangers

Three Identical Strangers is not an airplane movie. I didn’t know that when I swiped past Rampage, Blockers and the one where Melissa McCarthy goes to college. By the time the plane landed, the seatback screen reset to stock footage of a pleasant-looking steward, and I got lost in the middle-distance of my tray table, I had learned my lesson. Three Identical Strangers is about a pop cultural flash-in-the-pan, best immortalized in two jokes and 20 seconds on VH1’s I Love the 80s. Three identical triplets discovered each other’s existence in 1980. They were raised in different homes, different tax brackets, different cities. But they were identical down to the sports they played in high school and the kind of women they dated. They made the talk show rounds and that should’ve been it. But what came after, what makes Three Identical Strangers what it is, is somehow even more unbelievable. Go in as blind as you can, but be prepared for a twisting, tragic story of aching humanity that answers questions you didn’t notice it was asking, all told in frustrated close-up.