Metacritic 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]

This film's not-so-secret weapon is Michael J. Fox, who works tirelessly to keep the comedy afloat even when its sentimental side begins to show.

The role fits Fox like a glove but perhaps at this point in his career he should be scouting for something less form-fitting.

Life with Mikey is a good-hearted retread of many other movies about friendship between a hapless adult and a wise child.

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.

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.

Lane turns in a fine performance, the kids are great and although Cyndi Lauper isn't given much to do, she does it well. But overall, afterwards I was glad to get out.