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Starring Judge Reinhold, etc. In an ironic turn of events, halfway through this film, I got a call from my dad. He asked me what I was doing and told him that I was screened a film called Vice Versa. After assuring him it was not a movie involving transsexuals, I explained that he, of all people, would get a kick out of the premise."Thanks to an ancient Thai relic, a relic not roaming the halls of the Field Museum or being plundered by Indiana Jones, a father and son have accidentally switched bodies, with the father being forced to go to junior high, and the son being forced to go to his father's job," I said. My dad grumbled something and wondered out loud what the catch was with switching bodies with a son. "I spend all my time grading papers and making lessons plans, so you can go to college and learn something, and what do you do? You graduate and manage to find a way to watch even more movies than you did when you were seven." It was then my turn to ask what the catch was. "Enjoy your silly movie," my father said. And enjoy it I did. Let me put this behind us right now: despite that nagging feeling to the contrary, Vice Versa did not receive any Academy Awards for excellence, nor is it the type of film I would normal choose to screen. Vice Versa was picked because it was filmed inside my old junior high school, Percy Julian Junior High, in Oak Park. The parent/kid body switch idea here is nothing new, as the technique was pioneered during the '60's in the children's book Freaky Friday. And, yes, there are glass bottles made of 50% post consumer material that aren't as recycled as the oh-so-subtle message that family is meaningful and that the bond between a father and son is more important than one's job, but, thanks to humorously solid performances by Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage, Vice Versa overcomes the 'been there, screened that' reference that seems was coined for this type of film. Strangely though, both Reinhold and Savage seem more comfortable acting after Dick Clement and Ian LaFrenais's script has the two switching bodies. I just didn't buy Reinhold as the vice-president of a major Chicago department store, nor did I accept Savage as a wimpy, clueless seventh grader. However, Reinhold's portrait of a 12-year-old was calm and poised, with Reinhold somehow managing to glue a dopey, awe-struck expression on his face for the majority of his time as a pre-teen. Savage himself was no slouch either. Sticking with the older Reinhold pound for pound, Savage delivered a surprisingly good performance for such a young actor. He yells at his elders without the slightest trace of remorse (imagine, getting paid to yell at your figures of responsibility), orders around people with an iron hand, and even manages to slick back his hair without it looking too ridiculous. There is also a tacked on sub-plot involving Swoosie Kurtz's attempt to retrieve the Thai relic from Reinhold and Savage, and a completely superfluous chase scene involving the stealing of a police motorbike, but in the long run, this is negligible. In this era of hard-core war films and emotional vomitoriums like Saving Private Ryan and Liar Liar respectively, a warm and fuzzy, family film like Vice Versa was a rather unexpected and entertaining surprise.
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