| Buena Vista Pictures | Release Date: June 4, 1993 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
7
Mixed:
5
Negative:
4
|
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Critic Reviews
Life With Mikey is spun with delightful wisecracks, a childlike charm and the exhilaration of surmounting the odds - even though the sum of these parts cloys just a bit. [1 June 1993]
Life with Mikey is awfully easy to take, thanks mostly to Fox's breezy charm. [4 June 1993, p.51]
Life With Mikey is friendly and funny and ought to renew a lot of lost affection at the movies in coming weeks -- it's solid entertainment with heart and an ever- so-gentle contemporary edge. [4 June 1993, p.C1]
Tykey Michael J. Fox is Mikey in Life With Mikey, a charmingly scruffy story about a former child star whose career and life are rejuventated by a feisty street urchin. Impish and good-hearted, this Buena Vista release should delight elementary school kids on summer vacation and stake out a lively life at the boxoffice. [1 June 1993]
Life with Mikey is seldom the stuff of belly laughs. But Vidal is a minor find as the cheeky street urchin, Cyndi Lauper contributes off-the-wall support as the Chapmans' ditzy secretary, and Fox's low-key presence is as amiable as ever. [4 June 1993, p.L21]
Of course, the whole thing would collapse in two seconds without a co-star on the order of newcomer Vidal, whose New York street kid is convincing and appealing without ever seeming forced. Together, she and Fox make you happy to overlook plot holes and enjoy what might otherwise be fairly routine family fare. [4 June 1993]
It's the kind of movie that one quickly forgets after the credits roll. But for 90 painlessly engaging minutes, "Mikey" makes for pretty good company. [4 June 1993, p.20]
An uneven look at the reclamation of a former child star, "Life With Mikey" has the strangely amiable feel of a cult movie for the peanut gallery. It's camp and cutesy all at the same time, like a kiddie-car ride down "Sunset Boulevard" with an aging Gary Coleman behind the wheel. Caught somewhere between a spoof and a celebration of child-powered sitcoms, it only hints at the real toll of being a has-been teen.
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The movie is best when it sends up the whole culture of child stars and commercials -- "I wanna grow artistically," says one well-paid brat. "I wanna work with Michelle Pfeiffer." But it loses its edge, and soon Life With Mikey is awfully close to the thing it sets out to lampoon. [4 June 1993, p.G5]
Written by Marc Lawrence, a writer on "Family Ties," "Life With Mikey" has a sitcom sensibility. The script is simply incredulous, the lines are predictable and the stupid sight gags run from cake-in-the-face to, if you really want to know, retching-in-the-hat. One wonders why Lapine - a respected stage director ("Into the Woods," "Falsettoland") ever hooked up with this; obviously, he is determined to segue into films. [4 June 1993, p.F2]
Life with Mikey is a subpar piece of film making for which the producers' intentions are all-too- apparent. In slapping together a formula-riddled picture, they hope to cash in on the early-summer family-oriented audience (those that are questing for something to see before the re-release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves). Considering the creative limitations of this project, such blatant marketing is patently offensive. Those with a yen to see something for the whole family can find hundreds of better offerings on video, and fans of Michael J. Fox would do better to peruse old episodes of Family Ties. At least back then, he appeared to care about what he was doing.
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It's too dumb for adults and too sophisticated
for kids. Or vice-versa. [9 June 1993]
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