Audiences will respond as they always do, but Kore-eda is made of smarter stuff than this. Starring: Kristen Bell, Kelsey Grammer, Seth Rogen. And while the director’s evident rapport with child performers is always a delight to observe, he hasn’t written actual characters for the kids this time: they simply laugh, smile and twinkle on cue. After shes left at the altar, a workaholic advertising executive ends up on her Caribbean honeymoon cruise with her estranged father. Moreover, the hoary contrast between the chilly white-collar family and the cheerier, less privileged brood is classism at its most patronising. But the film’s critical lack of dramatic nuance undercuts its emotional resonance. There’s typical grace and good humour in Kore-eda’s handling of this all-but-impossible situation. The pair’s opposing parenting styles create friction as the families initiate a staggered scheme to reswap the boys. Far more judicious in his response to any parent’s worst nightmare is Yudai (Franky Lily), the chilled-out, hippy-ish patriarch of the larger, poorer family. He has long felt curiously disconnected from his loving but faintly dim son – his only child with more nurturing wife Midori (Machiko Ono) – and the promise of another boy out there with his blood brings out his most selfish instincts. Particularly adversely affected is work-wedded yuppie businessman Ryota (J-pop star Masahuru Fukuyama), who had never been much of a dad in the first place. Two baby boys – one from a working-class family, the other from a wealthy one – are switched at birth by a hospital nurse, and the parents must face the emotional fallout when the error is discovered six years later. The melodramatic premise is as old as the hills, which isn’t a problem in itself it was good enough for Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’, after all. And his latest, for all its careful construction and sweet pockets of feeling, is his glibbest and most morally one-sided film to date. But a certain packaged preciousness is beginning to seep into Kore-eda’s work that wasn’t present in works like 2004’s ‘Nobody Knows’. Dans Tel pre, tel fils, son nouveau film prim Cannes, il s’interroge sur les questions de filiation. Fernsehen SRF, Anita Egger Le cinaste japonais Hirokazu Kore-eda n’a pas son pareil pour diriger des enfants. These films are so relentlessly decent that to criticise them feels akin to stealing Christmas. LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON - das ist herzerreissendes, stilles Kino. It is affecting and charming, but not Kore-eda's best work.An unassuming humanist whose keenest advocates have been known to invoke the sacred syllables ‘Ozu’, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda last visited our screens with 2011’s ‘I Wish’, a winning fable of fraternal reunion with which his latest, ‘Like Father, Like Son’, shares many virtues: a warmly optimistic worldview in the face of significant domestic obstacles, a preoccupation with modern family structures and kids so gosh-darn cute as to make even Cliff Richard leave the cinema feeling broody.
#Like father like son film movie
The movie follows Ryota's crisis, and simply assumes that Yudai doesn't and needn't change. It is a powerful theme, but however well acted, the film has a black-and-white assumption: Ryota is uptight and needs to go on an emotional journey, and easygoing, goofy Yudai is the life-affirming good guy, the wonderful earth-father who plays with his kids. His world is turned upside down by news that the hospital muddled up the babies six years ago: his biological boy is now being brought up by Yudai (Franky Lily), a cheerful underachiever, and Ryo has Yudai's son. Masaharu Fukuyama plays Ryota, a driven and ambitious salaryman, married to Midori (Machiko Ono), with a perfect house and a six-year-old son. Like Father Like Son is a film of emotional poignancy, acted and directed with integrity, intelligence, lucidity and observational calm. So it is disconcerting to realise that, even on a second viewing, I can't share the euphoric critical responses that have widely greeted his latest work. Hirokazu Kore-eda is a film-maker from Japan about whom I have been enthusing and evangelising for 15 years.
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