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.

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 saw this back in 87 when it came out and have watched it many many times since then. The two main stars, Dudley and Kirk steal the show. There are so many quotable lines from Like Father Like son. I love when Dudley M. as his son, is walking through the hospital with his interns making the rounds and he has no idea what to do. They interns are all following him as he slowly and awkwardly tries to figure out where to go and when he thinks he's finished the task, he looks at the interns and says, "great rounds". So funny. I saw some really bad reviews here about this movie: Why? They must have something against really funny movies with great actors.

Doctor Dudley Moore and his teenage son Kirk Cameron end up becoming each other in this terrible little film. A brain transference formula is the cause here. The typical misunderstandings and forced-comedic situations then occur. Moore continued to struggle with roles after his crowning achievement in "Arthur" six years earlier. Cameron, thought to be the biggest star of television's "Growing Pains", was trying to become a bankable movie star. That plan fell flat as well. 2 stars out of 5.

Dudley Moore is hilarious. This terrified and later excited teen in a middle aged man's body gets into so many wild situations. But he is very creative when he has to be and quite a schemer.

Sean Astin is great as the best friend, and why wouldn't he be? Look who his parents are. Well, that doesn't always mean success, but he has gone on to have quite a career, and here we can see why.

Kirk Cameron isn't that highly regarded, and he's no Mike Seaver here. If he has talent, that's the role where he showed it. Here, he's kind of ordinary, but he gets the job done. In the scene with the baby being born he really shines. There is also another kind of stereotypical scene where he goes beyond the usual, As a genius who has trouble with social interaction, he's no Iain Armitage, who is the master.

Cloud Dancing from "Dr. Quinn" is the one who picks up Earl and carries him to the Navajo medicine man. I didn't know this until the closing credits. He was not known for being funny, but now that I know who it was, it was nice to see him with a sense of humor.

Earl is given something to drink and immediately it becomes clear what has happened. The Navajo is horrified to look at the white man and see himself. The white man, apparently speaking the Navajo language, obviously feels the same way.

Some questions I have. Chris has an appointment soon with a Northwestern recruiter. Not sure why Northwestern, because they are driving distance from Death Valley. Oh, well. We also don't know why Jack is British but living in the United States. By the way, this stuff that causes the body switching is clear, so why is Jack going to use that bottle by mistake, rather than the one full of red stuff?

And one last adventure does not involve a car chase. It is just one car, driven recklessly, causing damage to itself and everything else as we must endure a band that put the heavy in metal, one that makes Autograph (which we and Jack had to endure earlier) look like The Eagles. The editing is interesting because we keep going Jack and forth between two locations, and each time we see the car again, the "music" continues from where it left off.

It's not a kids' movie. Some curse words were obviously changed for TV. Who says "dorkhead"? And there is one scene of a sexual nature which, if you remember this man is actually a teenager, is actually in terrible taste, but doesn't go overboard.

But cleaned up for TV as I saw it, I wouldn't say all kids should avoid it. It's pretty childish.

Yes, we've seen this sort of thing before? So what. They're all unique, if you really think about it.

And I had fun.