A looking glass, cracked into four parts

Molly Shannon (right) with Abigail Falle and Jake Beale in the fairy-tale movie "More of Me." (brooke palmer/lifetime)

I'm always driven to distraction when one actor is playing twins who appear in the same scenes. How seamlessly have the two images been conjoined? Who owns the back of that head? Did the hairstylist successfully duplicate every last curl and frizzie? I can't stop scanning the screen for glitches.

That was one reason Lifetime's "More of Me" drove me nuts, since there are four Molly Shannons careening in and out of the action like whirling dervishes. The fairy-tale movie, which premieres tonight at 9, is about a wife, mother, and environmental activist who literally becomes four people to cope with the demands of her daily life. One day, Shannon's weary Alice is gazing into the looking glass and wishing for "more of me," and suddenly three new Alices - Sexpot Alice, Business Alice, and Mommy Alice - march out of the mirror to take over. For those viewers policing for sloppy image synch-ups, the movie is a feast of potential.

But there are many other reasons this distaff version of "Multiplicity" is an intensely irritating viewing experience. Top among them is watching the likable Shannon, who was so dramatically sound earlier this year in "Year of the Dog," deliver not just one weak performance, but four really bad turns all at once. Shannon was clearly busy on the set of "More of Me," with costume changes and all, and she deserves a gold star for effort. But she plays Alice's selves as an Unfab Four of humorless cliches. She doesn't seem to be having any genuine fun as the Alices take care of business - it's all forced, furious whimsy with an overlay of self-help.

The moralizing script does Shannon no favors, as it all but forbids her to bring on the satirical spirit of her "Saturday Night Live" roots. "More of Me" is written by Kelli Pryor as a glib lesson for working mothers who are feeling inadequate, and Shannon's gleeful irony might spoil the Very Important Message about accepting limitations. Alice has become fractured because she's so obsessed with saving a local tree from city tractors that she barely attends to her twins and her husband, Rex (Steven Weber, just walking through). Having botched her son's toilet training and forgotten her anniversary, she feels like a failure on all fronts. She desperately needs a dose of perspective.

For most of the movie, it looks like Alice is being punished for her ambition to "have it all," to be an emotionally present mother, a loving wife, and a committed professional. Her hubris and narcissism have led her to a crackup, because she has refused to choose between being a good homemaker and being an effective tree-hugger. "Maybe you should rethink why you work so much," Mommy Alice vindictively says to Alice. To me, the sense that Alice has overstepped her bounds as a woman is the enduring gist of "More of Me."

But, of course, the script doesn't own that message, and the movie resolves into an "It's a Wonderful Life"-like story about returning to life renewed. Alice emerges from the looking glass intact, an angel gets her wings, and, best of all, there's no more of "More of Me."

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. For more on TV, visit boston.com/ae/tv/blog/.