I mentioned one of the worst times in my life was when my mom made me spend the whole summer in India when I was 8.
Having my cousins Srikant and Soujanya there for company helped a lot…screw that, no it didn’t. Sorry guys.
Fine, they were better than nothing…
I did get to stay in the nicest hotel I’d stayed in in my life…for a half a day, and then my parents decided they wanted to save money and put us in a glorified toilet instead. The net effect of all that was to make me even angrier.
Such a brief, brief, brief taste of happiness…
Some of the young adult books that you can’t find here and I got to read helped…but my mom was so rarely willing to buy them.
Well, you know, what – one good thing did happen. Not during the trip, but on the plane there. Normally my parents wouldn’t even pay for headphones during the 20-hour flights to India, but somehow I got to have a pair on this time and I watched the previous year’s Vice Versa. Otherwise I might not have ever discovered it!
I loved this movie. I’m doubly mad that, because people watched the awful Like Father, Like Son instead of this, Vice Versa not only bombed, but it killed Judge Reinhold’s career. He got to play the “other” man in the Santa Clause movies, but beyond that the most notoriety he got after Vice Versa was on TV. There he managed an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor On A Comedy Series when he played The Close Talker on Seinfeld, but even on TV his most notable work after the Seinfeld appearance was when he made fun of his own name on Arrested Development and Clerks: The Animated Series.
Luckily the film’s performance didn’t seem to hurt Fred Savage, who began performing his defining role that same year.
“As I look back on that summer many years ago, I feel amazed. All those months of negativity – and this movie sticks out for the joy it brought me!”
Reinhold plays a business executive named Marshall whose shotgun wedding in college hasn’t harmed his career (or his love life, as the divorcee is now dating a wonderful woman). However, he has so far failed to connect with his now-preteen son Charlie. When Marshall accidentally brings home a strange Asian skull after one of his work trips, it switches his brain with Charlie’s. While Charlie is overjoyed over not having to go to school now, his dad is irritated over the whole turn of events, especially having to take even a day off from his workaholic lifestyle. However, when the smugglers who had acquired the artifact want it back, it leads to frightening situations for both the father/son and the son/father, and thus to their bonding and getting to understand each other better. None of the sentimental moments feel forced at all, or even fail to move you, and they’re helped greatly by the performances of Reinhold and Savage. That’s in addition to the constant stream of laughs.
Again, this movie deserved a much better fate but what can you do?
Well, actually, I did my part by buying it on Prime Video. Any of my personal friends who wanna have a movie night and watch this, let me know. Everyone else – I encourage you to buy it yourself. At this point there’s no way it will ever make back Sony’s money, or resurrect Judge Reinhold’s career, but it’s a matter of principle.
Note: I just found out this was based on a 19th century British novel, which had previously been adapted into a 1916 silent short I can’t even find online, a 1937 feature Wikipedia says exists but if it does is so obscure IMDB doesn’t even have an entry, a 1948 feature, and a 1981 miniseries. None of those deserve their own entry but after finding the 1948 film and two episodes of the 1981 show on YouTube I can say that the concept didn’t lend itself well to the 19th century Britain setting, at least not when the son was attending a strict boarding school and the dad was running a prosperous company. Both of them were required to be so uptight that the comedy potential was very untapped.
It sure was tapped in this adaptation though, and this alone justifies the creation of the original book!
Bottom Line: Buy it!
Up Next: Getting a bit obscure here.
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