The Corner Penthouse

Like Father Like Son arrives on Blu-ray as part of Mill Creek Entertainment's Retro VHS Style series, with packaging designed to look like the VHS videocassettes of the 1980s and 1990s. Several other titles in the series have already been reviewed on The Corner Penthouse, and I'm always excited when Mill Creek announces more. It's fun to see if it's a title I used to own on VHS, or one whose trailer I remember seeing at the start of some other VHS tape, or even some obscure movie I've never heard of before.


Like Father Like Son (1987) is the tale of Chris Hammond (Kirk Cameron), a typical high school senior pursuing his general education: girls, cars and music. His father, Dr. Jack Hammond (Dudley Moore), is a successful heart surgeon, on the verge of being named Chief of Staff at a leading hospital. They're about as close as a father and son can get...but they're about to become even closer. In one split second, father and son accidentally change bodies, resulting in a chaotic change of lifestyle for both of them. The son gets the Jaguar, the gold card, and the boss's wife. His father gets the allowance, the biology final, and the fake ID!


This is one of five "body swap" movies of the 1980s. The others being All of Me (1984), 18 Again! (1988), Vice Versa (1988), and Dream A Little Dream (1989). The grandfather of the genre, Freaky Friday (1976), is from the 1970s; and Big (1988) doesn't count as it's an age-swap film, which is not the same as a "body swap". My family had Like Father Like Son on VHS 30 years ago. Just seeing this sleeve brings back so many memories, but does the movie itself hold up? Unfortunately, not as much as would have liked.


I have no problem with the body swap device; a "Brain Transference Serum" slipped into an empty Tabasco bottle. Dudley Moore is a joy, and he seems to be having a blast playing a teen in an adult's body. Sean Astin, as Chris' friend Trigger, is the other highlight. He looks so much older than the little kid we saw in The Goonies (1985) just two years earlier. My problem with the movie is that there isn't much story here. It only takes place over the course of two or three days, and there really aren't any high stakes, especially for son Chris. He has a track meet to go to, but it's not some kind of "big game" at the climax of the film. What happens at the mid-movie track meet has no consequence on any events later. Sure, Chris gets beaten up by the school bully, but that's because he took the bully's girlfriend to a concert, which was planned BEFORE the body-swap happened. Chris does have a college interview near the end of the film, but he had no interest in being a doctor anyway, and the meeting with the college representative never takes place, so that whole storyline is inconsequential. Father Jack carries the bulk of the story, with his goal of being anointed Chief of Staff as the climax.


Besides the lack of stakes, there are also some rather questionable elements of the story that only exist to drive the plot forward. After the swap happens, Jack/Chris (father in son's body) tells Chris/Jack (son in father's body) to stay at home (call in sick to work) while he attends school for the day, as it would not be good for "Jack", without the medical knowledge in his brain, to do his duties at the hospital. That makes sense, but that wouldn't lead to any hijinks. So, the story contrives to have Jack's boss, Dr. Armbruster (Patrick O'Neal) trespass into the Hammond house in order to catch "Jack" being quite the opposite of sick, and thus capable of coming in to work. At no point did I ever get the feeling that Armbruster was the type of guy who would simply walk into someone's house uninvited. Of course, if the front door were locked, the movie would be much shorter :-)


Catherine Hicks appears briefly as Dr. Amy Larkin, a co-worker of Jack's, who wants the hospital to start admitting uninsured patients. This plotline goes nowhere and seems to only exist to later show the hospital staff that Jack is "not himself" today when he changes his opinion on the matter. We never find out if the hospital committee approved her plan. Also, for reasons that are never explained, once Jack/Chris starts showing off his new intelligence in his different classes, all of the other students start hating him. They even go so far as to distance themselves from him during lunch in the cafeteria. Most of the students are strangers to him, so why would they care about "Chris", one way or the other? That part of the movie made no sense to me. In fact, Chris' part of the story really drags the movie down.

The video transfer on this Blu-ray is watchable, but it's not one of Mill Creek's best efforts. The picture isn't as sharp and colorful as it should be. It's a marginal improvement over any previous DVD release.


Like Father Like Son is presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio (not 1.85:1 like the case says) with a runtime of 1:39:31. On the audio side, there is only an English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio track. Subtitles are available in English only. As is the case with most Mill Creek Entertainment releases, there are no special features - just like the original videocassette!


The real "bonus feature" here is the vintage-looking VHS-inspired slipsleeve, with faux wear and tear, and fake "rental stickers" on it, while giving the appearance of a videocassette being pulled out from the right side (though the original VHS may have been in a bottom-loading box), complete with tape label side on the right spine. Here's a complete look at this special slipsleeve. Click on it to get a better look.


The front artwork is based on the original U.S. VHS box art, as seen below, though the blue corner flap with the TriStar logo is noticeably absent. The back of the slipsleeve bears a similarity to the original VHS box art, using similar photos, but in a different orientation.


The case artwork underneath is based on the original theatrical poster (yeah, it had that ugly red square behind them), which means that the VHS-style slipsleeve may only be available for a limited time. In the photo below, the slipsleeve cover is on the left and the case artwork underneath is on the right.


Since Mill Creek Entertainment is a budget company, you can grab Like Father Like Son on Amazon for a great low price right now.


The "Retro VHS Style" series includes the following Blu-ray releases, which are being listed in chronological movie order, and not the order they are being released onto Blu-ray. Some titles below may not have been released yet.





Images used come from the Internet Movie Database gallery of the film. The Blu-ray has been provided by Mill Creek Entertainment for review on this site.