Invasion of the Body Switching Comedies, Part 2:
A few weeks back while discussing Vice Versa a lot of y’all chimed in to say you felt that Like Father Like Son was the superior 1980’s body-switching comedy. So naturally I had to go out and find myself a VHS copy of said flick to see what was what. LFLS stars Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron..two actors with careers soon to be in precipitous decline...Moore’s due to ill health and the reaction to 1990’s Crazy People....Cameron’s due to his conversion to evangelical christian and his belief that homosexuality is an “unnatural plague”. Seriously, dude is the absolute worst. Moore plays Dr Jack Hammond, a fancy pants cardiologist who, at the top of the film, refuses to treat a patient in cardiac arrest because he doesn’t have health insurance. Dude is ice cold. Cameron plays his 16 year-old son Chris, who has a mullet and dresses like an asshole and is unpopular at school BUT drives a sick ass jeep and has unlimited access to his old man’s bank account. Right away I do not care what happens to either character. Oh that! Chris’ best buddy TRIGGER (80’s utility man and Sam Wise from Lord of the Rings Sean Astin) gets a Tabasco sauce bottle full of brain switching serum from his uncle and brings it over to the Hammond’s 1980’s coke mansion. Dr Jack comes home from work and makes himself a bloody mary (at night?? douchebag) and adds a couple drops of Tabasco expecting it to be Tabasco and not brain switching serum. So Dr Jack and Chris switch brains and Trigger looks directly into the camera and says “I don’t fucking believe it”...which really impressed me when I saw this flick and an 8 year old. I love the F-word. Much like in Vice Versa they sort of decide to make lemonade out of lemons and just roll with it. Chris-as-Dr. Jack hops into the old man’s Jaguar and heads out into the night to spend money on clothes. We know this because there is a montage of shots of ATM’s shitting out cash. He also visits a PG-13 strip club where no one is actually stripping. Meanwhile, left home alone, Dr Jack-as-Chris decides to dance around the house and play air guitar...as if that’s something actual Chris couldn’t just do on his own. Why Kirk Cameron does not pick up Dudley Moore’s British accent in the brain swap is never explained. Eventually Dr Jack-as-Chris heads off to high school and Chris-as-Dr Jack goes to work at the hospital. Results are medium funny. There are also paper thin subplots involving love interests whom neither character seem particularly interested in. Eventually they switch brains back but not before Chris-as-Dr Jack loses his old man an important promotion by voting to give care to people without health insurance. Real Chris...back in his natural body...races to the hospital (while Motley Crue’s “Wild Side” blasts on the soundtrack. siiick!) to explain to his dad’s repeal-and-replace bosses that his old man deserves the promotion anyway. They are unmoved. It’s literally a nothing climax. The movie ends. Before we go though I wanted to mention that this movie was directed by a guy named Rod Daniel...who just shot the shit out of it...source material be damned! Even though it’s a c-grade comedy it’s full of Kubrickian tracking shots...Hitchcockian crane swoops...frenetic editing. Dude was clearly trying to set himself up for a career as an auteur. Unfortunately that career involved Joe Pesci’s The Super and Home Alone 4 and, early last year, dying. RIP man…
*originally posted august 11, 2017