18 Again! *** (1988, George Burns, Charlie Schlatter, Tony Roberts, Anita Morris, Red Buttons, Pauly Shore) – Classic Movie Review 13,815

George Burns stars as a grandfather who exchanges souls with his grandson Charlie Schlatter, in the 1988 fantasy-comedy film 18 Again!.

Director Paul Flaherty’s 1988 American fantasy-comedy film 18 Again! stars George Burns and Charlie Schlatter.

Nonagenarian George Burns shows he is still the master of comic timing in this moderate feel-good body swap comedy. He is playing a decade younger than he actually is, as an 81-year-old, businessman Jack Watson, who is biffed on the cranium in a car accident and, while lying in coma, trades places with his grandson David,18-year-old Charlie Schlatter, a new college boy.

The amiable, promising Schlatter has most of the picture to himself in an extended Burns impersonation. Nice though that is, it leaves you begging for more of old George, aged 92. Nevertheless, Burns still shines in his final leading role (though did later appear in 1994’s Radioland Murders). The script, by Josh Goldstein and Jonathan Prince, is amusing and inventive enough.

Burns, real name Nathan Birnbaum, won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar at 80 for The Sunshine Boys, his first film in 36 years, and lived till he was 100, though he didn’t get to fulfil his promise of playing the London Palladium on his 100th birthday.

Also Tony Roberts, Anita Morris, Red Buttons, Miriam Flynn, Jennifer Runyon, George DiCenzo, Bernard Fox, Kenneth Tigar, Anthony Starke.

Big (1988, with Tom Hanks) is the easily pick of a crop of three body swap movies of around the same time. The others are 18 Again! (1988, with George Burns and Charlie Schlatter) and Like Father Like Son (1987, with Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron).