The comedy team of Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron give this their all, but they come out on the short end of the stick with one of half-a-dozen films of the same theme that came out in the mid-to-late 1980's. This seemed had been already done going back to the 1930s, and with the success of "Big" in 1986, the theme was repeated with at least three other theatrical movies (and similarly structured stories),every Hollywood studio seemed to be ripping it off. But with some lacking originality, they made up in witty scripts, and unfortunately this one does not fall into that category.

As high school student Kirk Cameron gets grossed out over the dissecting of a frog, docto father Dudley Moore proves his success in an upscale Los Angeles Hospital. the drinking of some sort of Native American potion all of a sudden switches their personalities, putting Cameron's awkward teenager into serious doctor Moore's body, and vice versa. Now they have to live each other's lives, and while the possibilities of funny situations seems endless, that rarely ever happens in this misfire, the weakest of the lot of the same carried over plot.

As funny as Dudley Moore could be, it seems like he is simply just playing Arthur all over again, being a silly teenager rather than a foolish rich drunk. Cameron gets to show more range, but each of their situations have a sitcom feel, mostly undeveloped, and many of the supporting characters seem like cardboard cutouts. this seems like the type of film that knew of other Studios doing similar stories, and rushed it out to jump on the bandwagon without really getting together a great script. That weakens the impact, and ultimately, it just ain't that funny. Shots of late 1980's Los Angeles gave me some nostalgia, but that's not enough to make this memorable.

In the late 1980s there were several body swap teen comedies that emerged in a short space of time. Tom Hanks in Big was the big one and the others were judged against it.

Like Father Like Son is a likable comedy but drastically lacks a plot, wastes some of its actors and seems to be a series of sketches.

Kirk Cameron plays a high school teenager who with the aid of a Native Indian portion mixes his mind with his brilliant surgeon father, Dudley Moore.

Now its Moore who acts as the kid and Cameron goes to school with his adult know how which irritates the other students and his best friend, Sean Astin.

They both have to get used to their new bodies, Moore has to navigate a promotion but upsets his hospital boss by siding with a colleague to offer medicine to those without insurance and fooling around with his wife.

Moore is in his element when he is having fun as a teenager and Cameron is very good as the more uptight one after the body swap, maybe he was just being himself!

Patrick O'Neal and Catherine Hicks are rather wasted in this very 1980s comedy. Its sporadically funny and mildly enjoyable.

In 1976 there was Freaky Friday. This movie came out in 1987 and Vice Versa in 1988. I liked both of those better than this.

If you haven't guessed the plot by now then let me apprise you. It is a body swap film. Dr. Jack Hammond (Dudley Moore) accidentally drinks a brain swap serum and ends up trading bodies with his son Chris (Kirk Cameron). Neither of them even try to pretend to be the other as they carry on in different bodies, in different environments, but with the exact same behavior.

The monumental difference between this movie and Vice Versa (starring Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage) is that in Vice Versa the son was a 10-year-old-boy. It's actually funnier, and in some ways adorable, to see a kid that young attempting to be an adult. Even if he's tries his best he's going to fail.

In this movie, the son is seventeen so he has an inkling of what it takes to be an adult, or he can at least fake it. Chris not only doesn't try to be adult for the sake of his father, he actually regresses. I mean that he was acting more immature in his adult body than he did in his teenage body. I find nothing funny about a seventeen-year-old acting like he's ten.