De tal padre tal hijo

Someone must have thought that all this movie needed to succeed was Kirk Cameron to pull in the teenage girls and Dudley Moore to pull in their parents. Somehow they forgot that Kirk is incapable of pulling off anything in the way of depth in his acting and Dudley in a role like this would get carried away with its silliness.

The premise was old, the dialogue poor, the situations strained, and the acting cartoonish. The result is a bad movie with a fading teen heartthrob and a fifty-something actor playing his Arthur character at the age of ten. If anyone finds this in a 'sale' bin for used videos, try to bury it farther down where it can be avoided and forgotten.

I suffered through this film in jaw dropping disbelief.

First of all, who would cast Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron in the same film? Seriously? It's like mixing oil and water and just doesn't work. Especially if your cast Kirk Cameron as Dudley Moore's son. Who thought that would be believable? Hey, let's take two of the worst actors in the world that are complete opposites and cast them as father and son.

Then, to add to the puke factor, there's the 80's hair band background music. As if Cameron as son and Moore as father wasn't enough to induce projectile vomiting they pushed it one step further with the lame soundtrack.

Then there's the story line, the script. Were they taking mind altering drugs when they wrote this? If so, it was something that caused complete stupidity.

The way I see it, this story gave each of the two groups (teenaged students and middle-aged professional people) a better understanding of the trials and tribulations the other experiences on a daily basis. As kids, we think our parents' lives are easy, and as adults, we tend to forget the pressures experienced by highschoolers. I enjoyed this film, and hope others will, too.

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.

Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I think this movie's great. There's lots of hilarious (and clean) sight gags, slapstick and laugh-out-loud situations.

Dudley Moore, obviously the far more superior comedian, is fantastic as a teenager stuck in an adult's body. He has many funny scenes and milks them for all they're worth, my favourite being the chewing gum/cigarette incident. The looks on his co-stars' faces is priceless. Watch also for Moore's date with Margaret Colin (that goes really badly) and when he does the rounds at the hospital.

Unfortunately, there are a few flaws. There's a bit of swearing and sexual reference (which would make it an otherwise very suitable film for kids). It wastes the talent of Catherine Hicks in a surprisingly pointless and unnecessary role and Sean Astin is super-annoying (as always) as the "wacky" best friend/sidekick. The film also resorts to schmaltz at the end when it goes for a warm and fuzzy finale.

Otherwise, a great film that's lots and lots of fun. Funky soundtrack and wonderful flashback to the delightfully tacky fashions and hairstyles of the '80s.