What if you met yourself at another age? It's a fascinating question. It's enough of a struggle to imagine meeting yourself at your current age. Would you be able to live with yourself, or not? How would you react to your own foibles? Would you be in constant agreement with yourself, or would you find yourself on the opposite ends of arguments because you have a tendency to be argumentative? What profound things about yourself can change in twenty or thirty years, and how would the you after get along with the you before?

The Kid touches on some of these questions, but it does not go into great depth exploring them. I can imagine a comedy that does while still being funny. This is the sort of premise that can evoke thought and laughter in the same breath. But The Kid, while not entirely superficial, is too in love with the fact of its gimmick to bother exploiting it. It's not bad, just underachieving.

Because, after all, it is amusing. Bruce Willis and Spencer Breslin play the same person at two different ages, and they each have to straighten each other out. Never mind what changes to the younger one would surely effectively change the older into someone vastly different. Never mind, too, the lack of explanation for why he meets up with himself at all. None of that is important. The character, at both ages, is an interesting one, and he has supremely watchable chemistry with himself.