18 Again!

It’s hard to know who, if anyone, is borrowing from whom, but it seems singularly odd that the theme of older and younger male blood relations switching bodies should occur three times in the history of cinema, all within the space of about six months. The main distinction of this entry in the body-swapping sweepstakes is that this time it’s a grandfather (George Burns) and grandson (Charlie Schlatter) rather than father and son (Like Father Like Son, Vice Versa), and the grandson with his grandfather’s body spends most of the movie in a coma. Otherwise, Schlatter does his best to mimic Burns’s cigar-chomping manner, but Josh Goldstein and Jonathan Prince’s script is only fair, and Paul Flaherty’s direction is downright feeble. Both of the female leads (Anita Morris and Jennifer Runyon) are treated like bimbos, and Red Buttons has little to do in a secondary part. (JR)

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