Review of In His Father's Shoes (1997) by Kendall I — 26 Sep 2012

If I didn't have to watch this at school, I never would have even picked this up.

PLOT:After Clay's (Robert Ri'Chard) father, Frank (Louis Gossett, Jr.), passes away due to cancer, he and his family are heartbroken. Clay seems to be taking it hardest and even tries to stay as close to his father as he can, even through his things. While in the closet mourning, Clay spots some shoes he and his father found at a gypsy's place in the market. Clay puts them on and is immediately transported back to his father's school years in 1962. He finds out then that the shoes have a magic power for him to view his father's life through his eyes, with strange guidelines, however; he can control when he goes to the past by putting on/taking off the shoes, can't bring anything back from the past, and is forced to do and say what his father once did and said while in the past. Through this, Clay learns a lot more about his father and how he lived. It's a cheesy plot executed in an almost decent way.

ACTING:The acting in here was pretty sucky overall, but it had its highlight performances. I thought Robert Ri'Chard as Clay was pretty mediocre. He didn't put enough emotion into anything and almost everything he did came off as pitiful. His sadness, struggling, and even his happiness all came off as barely fitting. Some better performances, however, (shiners) would be Louis Gosset Jr. as his grandfather, Richard, Rachel Crawford as Celeste, and Djanet Sears as Virginia, the grandmother. Most of the performance overall were still pretty awful.

SCORE:The composed score was actually pretty cheesy and annoying, but it borrowed some pretty awesome oldies from the '60s and includes one touching soul song at the end credits. The composed score was awful, but the soundtrack was pretty good.

OTHER CONTENT:This movie was very problematic in its overall execution. It was uneven, cheesy, put in uneeded plot curves, and didn't live up to the potential it could have. I think it could have gone a whole lot better if the plot would have been completely re-written up to the point of the magic shoes. That whole cheesy aspect throws the movie off the axis of a possible win. The only thing that kept it going for me was the couple of good jokes and the few moments that were touching, such as the Aphrodite joke and the modern-day visit to Frank's old schoolhouse. It had its few moments, but it otherwise fell pretty flat.

OVERALL,a SUCKY movie with a cheesy plot, sucky acting, cheesy score and a good soundtrack, uneveness, abundant cheesiness, uneeded plot curves, and failed potential, but it did have its moments of laughs and tears - only a few.