Critical response
Like Father, Like Son received mostly positive reviews. On the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an 87% approval score, with an average rating of 7.61/10 based on 100 reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Sensitively written, smartly directed, and powerfully performed, Like Father, Like Son uses familiar-seeming elements to tell a thought-provoking story."[15] Metacritic gives the film a score of 73 out of 100, based on reviews from 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[16]
Andrew Chan of the Film Critics Circle of Australia writes, "Essentially, Like Father, Like Son is one of those rare films that keep the audience totally engaged, thoroughly profound, fully emoted and ultimately refreshing. In the scale of perfect cinema, this stands quite close."[17]
On the website of The American Spectator, Eve Tushnet wrote that the film "has some of the striking Kore-eda trademarks: the extraordinary acting from the children; the symmetrical framing and musical pacing; and the shifts between long shots in which all the people look tiny and child's-eye shots where all the people look huge."[18]
Andrew Schenker of Slant Magazine wrote a lukewarm review, praising the cinematography but also saying, "The film scores all of its thematic points early [and] unfolds among fairly ordinary lines, hitting all of the expected moments, and simply waiting out the time until Ryota realizes the inevitable folly of his decision."[19]
The film was the choice of Joshua Rothkopf in IndieWire's 2018 list of the best Japanese films of the 21st century.[20]
Remake
