Created by the same internet legends who won a Grammy for Pharrell Williams' "24 Hours of Happy," video, We Are From LA, "The Missing" loops, simulating a video game, and the characters eventually switch actors on their own, both necessitating and yielding multiple storyline structure.
Most boldly, in 1969 ABC switched actors for the Darrin role on "Bewitched" by replacing Dick York, who played the part for five years, with Dick Sargent.
Then, with a flick of a fluorescent-light switch, the actors burst in and the play began.
When delays occurred on Smith's film Hancock, which was scheduled for 2007, it was proposed to switch the actor's films.
At the last minute, however, casting logic impelled Fletcher to make a change, switching the actor into the romantic lead Davy, a more reflective, intricate character.
Somehow, Douglas' glib, disingenuous manager (a funny Paul Eisenhauer) sold superstar Hank on him (a deft Simms, switching to actor).
Then the screens switch to the actors and the action proper begins.
Another is the humor, comprehensible without supertitles, even when actors switch between English, Afrikaans, Zulu and Xhosa.
However, director William A. Wellman was so impressed with Cagney's intensity that he had the actors switch roles, thus facilitating a landmark performance in cinematic history.
Although it was not his original intention to have actors switch roles in the play, he was gratified by the 2000 Broadway revival, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly did exactly that, as two English actors had previously done in London.
In the end, however, the plotting is just too slack, and most of the actors switch to hamming mode — though not Roberts, who holds her nerve and plays the innocence straight.
