18 AGAIN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1988 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Slow and predictable comedy about 81-
year-old man who finds himself in his grandson's body. If
you have seen VICE VERSA, I recommend a nice rousing game of
Parchesi instead of this. Rating: -1.
A couple of weeks ago I reviewed VICE VERSA and I said that the plot of personalities trading bodies had been done before often and usually not very memorably. In fact, FREAKY FRIDAY--an early Jodie Foster film made for Disney--came to mind though I had seen only trailers for it. But I am sure I have seen the theme elsewhere; it is just the films were so forgettable. Now two weeks later I have seen another treatment of the same story and this one is really forgettable. The film is 18 AGAIN and, take my word for it, it is one time too many.
David Watson (played by newcomer Charlie Schlatter) has more than his share of problems. He is pledging at a fraternity and is being picked on by his frat brothers. The girl he secretly loves goes with his chief tormentor. David is expected to join the dull business of phonemaking owned by his grandfather Jack Watson (played by George Burns). Jack has only one problem: he wants to be 18 again like David. Through a birthday wish gone wrong, Jack finds himself in his grandson's body. Schlatter spends most of the rest of the film doing a George Burns impression. Jack then brings his own philosophy of self-confidence to straightening out his grandson's life from inside the grandson's body.
While VICE VERSA brought a fresh eye and a clever sense of humor to the trade-of-personality plot, 18 AGAIN drags through every predictable cliche at half the pace that Mr. Burns walks. The script totally sidesteps the plot of the boy in the old man's body and shows you only the old man in the boy's body and, even so, it does considerably less with that plot than VICE VERSA does with less screen time. The story does virtually nothing new with the idea. There is, however, one good piece of advice in the film. As David's chief tormentor is getting ready for a race with our hero he tells him, "Don't waste your time." Let me pass that advice on to you. Rate 18 AGAIN a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
mtgzz!leeper@rutgers.rutgers.edu
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews