Steineded
How sad is this?
Huievest
Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
richspenc
I agree with Roger Ebert on a lot of this movie. First, I agree that Dudly Moore has one good scene and Kirk Cameron has none. Well, Dudly has two I think. Second, I agree that the acting of the movie characters is way off.This is another of the body swap comedies that came out in 1987-1988. This is the worst one of them. Dudly Moore and Kirk Cameron swap bodies when Kirk's friend Sean Austin sneaks some "mind transfer" serum into Dudley's drink. Then the two of them swap minds. At first of course, they're shocked and upset. After that, the way each one of them acts in each other's body is so way off, unconvincing, and very annoying. Neither of them act even remotely funny and amusing except for Dudly twice at the hospital. Once with the funny way he decides to play with a machine next to a patient's bed, and once, as Ebert mentioned, when he smokes a cigarette while chewing gum at the board meeting. Every, and I mean everything else from both of them was stupid. Examples of stupid acting while Dudly's mind was in Kirk: the way he arrogantly patronizes his classrooms rubbing his "older education" in everyone's face causing the other kids to really not like him, his loudly snitching on the bully in class right after he throws a wet gob of paper at the blackboard, the way he arrogantly talks to the bully while parking his car while being very unaware of how much he is further angering him (the bully was already getting annoyed with him earlier in the film during track practice), him running in the relay at the track meet and then the way he completely dove into the air like that too short of the finish line (what the hell was that?) and that weird loud breathing when he hit the ground, him on a date with the hot girl at a rock concert and complaining about the loud music, leaving early, then stupidly patronizing her while driving her home. Can you blame her for getting out of his car so turned off? Can you blame the bully for then beating the crap out of him (with what I mentioned he did with the bully earlier, plus him being out with the girl he's interested in)? Examples of stupid acting while Kirk's mind was in Dudly: his sissy little temper tantrum to Dudly's mind in Kirk while trying to drive to school. His dancing and yelling to loud rock music in the house. His painting the town red with Sean. His overly forced irritating yelling such as the way he was yelling/singing "Jeremiah was a bullfrog" after being dropped off at home by his interns at the hospital, his yelling "I wanna be a doctor! I wanna be a doctor!" at the hospital for no particular reason near the end of the movie, as if he was just finding out for the first time what he was. And what I mentioned before about his yelling and running after his "son" in the car trying to drive to his school.Then for the supporting characters: the high school kids (the bully, the hot girl, the other cliques that wouldn't except Kirk) were just tired retreads of other 80s high school movies. The seducing woman from the hospital was so snobby, the way she talked to Sean while with Kirk's mind in Dudly at the bar. And when he caught his sofa on fire her reaction was snobby, but he was acting pretty stupid there too so he probably deserved it. The chief executive boss at the hospital was a one dimensional jerk. Dudly did act pretty stupid and annoying, but should a boss completely write off a great surgeon who's been a valuable asset to the hospital for years just for one time speaking out of line at a board meeting ("screw the insurance")?
bkoganbing
Like Father Like Son was made at the height of Kirk Cameron's bubblegum popularity as teen idol, courtesy of his television series Growing Pains which was dominating the ratings in 1987. Cameron was just getting into his fundamentalist religion kick so the script couldn't be too naughty.As it is it's a mildly amusing comedy of the Freaky Friday vein, only this time it's a father and son, Kirk's father in this case being Dudley Moore. Kirk's your typical teenage kid, just looking for a good time and not too serious. Moore is a very serious and respected surgeon who would like to be the new chief of staff at his hospital to replace Patrick O'Neal's whose recommendation on a replacement will probably make or break a candidate.Kirk's got some troubles of his own in the form of shapely Camille Cooper who's hitting on him. She's the girl friend of jock Micah Grant who hates Kirk and his friend Sean Astin.In fact Astin's archaeologist uncle is the cause of all the problems that Moore and Cameron face. The uncle Bill Morrison has come back from a dig at the Navajo reservation with a body transference medicine that Astin thinks would be worth a few laughs, even experimenting with a dog and cat on it. But when the maid thinks it's a condiment and Moore and Cameron use it on the spaghetti, strange things happen. Each lives about 36 hours in the other's bodies and the other's lives and generally make a mess of it. If you've seen both versions of Freaky Friday you've got a general idea of what's going to happen.The film did reasonably well at the box office though it failed to make Cameron a movie star. That didn't happen until Kirk started playing on the Christian film circuit. Moore and Cameron and Astin work well together and it's still mildly amusing.
Pepper Anne
Like Father, Like Son is probably most appealing to 80s fans, presenting typical teen genre conflicts as well as 80s teen stars, Kirk Cameron and Sean Astin. Young kids might appreciate it simply for the story (despite it's lack of novelty) of a teenager getting all the priveleges of being an adult, while only having to change appearance and not attitude. The decade however, offering a nauseating selection of role switching comedies and parodies, may have the rest of us looking to avoid this repetition and searching for something else on the shelves. Chris Hammond (Kirk Cameron) is a high school senior. He's an average student, a decent track team participant, and likes a girl at school who happens to be dating a psychotic jock bully. And, his dad, Jack (Dudley Moore) is breathing down his neck to get him an ivy league school to study pre-med, leaving Chris secretly wanting to tell his dad to just let him make his own decisions about what he wants to do.Chris's buddy, Trigger (Sean Astin), has a wacky uncle who's staying with him. He lived in the desert for awhile, experimenting with body-switching potions. Trigger gets a hold of the brain transference serum and it switches Chris and Jack's brains so that Chris is Jack and Jack is Chris. There's a mistake here, in that their accents should've switched as well, since when Trigger tried it on the cat and dog, the cat barked at the dog and the dog meowed at the cat. But, it makes for a whole lot of trouble. The incredibly boring and sometimes big-shot Dr. Hammond has to settle on being a teenager awhile. And Chris has to settle for being Dr. Hammond, both without screwing things up. For Dr. Hammond, he hopes to get the ordeal with over quickly; but for Chris, there's advantages to not having to show up for school, take tests, and the like. But, they each grow quite irritable of the situation as they tend to screw up each other's lives. Dr. Hammond has a few nasty run-ins with the bully as Chris. And Chris, involved in an affair with the boss's wife, not only sets the living room on fire, but also risks his father's chances of becoming chief of staff. I still think it's a fun movie for kids and probably teenagers. Safe family fun for the most part anyways due to lack of sex, violence, and for the most part, language. However, Kirk Cameron did tend to get quite annoying at parts as the whiny teenager. Actually, Trigger was one of the best characters in the movie as a sort of slacker friend of Chris, except he's not in the movie all that much. I did like Chris as Dr. Hammond during the hospital scenes, when he had to take his med students on rounds, and didn't know what the heck he was doing. It has it's moments.
filmlove-4
I liked Growing Pains, and I liked Dudley Moore, and I was 10 years old--how could I not like this film. Though i would have easily given the film a 10 had the imdb existed eleven years ago, watching it again I realized there just wasn't much there. though i still enjoy it, with a guilty grin on my face. the adult-teen switch formula was done much better in "Vice Versa" and "Big", but worse in "18 Again" (which all came out in the same year or so if i remember). There are some funny moments, and though overall it's not very high-quality, watch a few minutes of it on TV, you might even like it a bit.
