Mon père c'est moi

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think I have seen every example of the "body switch" genre, at least all of those that have been made in the past 40 years or so, and "Like Father Like Son" is the worst of them. The first 20 minutes or so are painless mediocrity, but then soon after the movie collapses. What's the problem? I think the main problem is that the characters are stupid. If I was in their situation, I know I would be terrified and trying my best to not raise suspicion. If the movie had done that, it could have been funny seeing these people trying to do their best but making mistakes. But the movie's two main characters seem to be trying their best to blow the charade - not realistic. And the movie's sense of humor is really bad - we have such stuff as audiences falling asleep during lectures, a gag that's done TWICE. If you want to see a good example of this genre, see "Freaky Friday" (the original or the remake) or "Vice Versa".