I don’t know why I suddenly wanted to re-watch the body-swap comedy Vice Versa (1988) except to say that I felt unreasonably nostalgic. If someone can give me anything with a more provocative flavor than nostalgia, I’d be much obliged. I remember when it was first released, and I know I liked it well enough for a handful of the lines to stick with me over 35 years later. I guess I wondered if it held up.
Details
Director: Brian Gilbert
Writers: Dick Clement, Ian La Frenais
Starring: Judge Reinhold, Fred Savage
Run time: 98 minutes
Summary of the Movie
If you’ve seen one body-swap movie, you pretty much know any other’s plot: (usually) a parent’s mind gets swapped with his or her child’s, and absurdity ensues. Vice Versa is no different. Any difference is in the detail and the execution.
This movie opens with a couple of thieves stealing an artifact from a Buddhist temple in the Far East and then quickly cuts to Chicago where we meet Marshall Seymour (Reinhold). He’s a successful VP of a department store, divorced, and a bit of an absentee father. Thanks to a pair of smugglers’ (played by Swoosie Kurtz and David Proval) ineptitude, Marshall ends up with the stolen artifact. We get the impression that Marshall truly does regret not being a more reliable dad when he misses his son Charlie’s (Savage) band concert. We also gather that he is a hard-charging executive, torn between careerism and fatherhood. With careerism edging out.
Charlie’s mom takes a vacation and leaves him in the care of his father for a few days. Father and son get into an argument about how neither knows what it’s like to be the other. During that argument, they say they wish they could trade places. Coincidentally, they were holding the mysterious artifact when they snarled this at each other and consequently got their wish. Now the father has to go to school and the 11-year-old boy has to fake being a successful business executive.
Through comedic mishaps and spending time in each other’s shoes, father and son come to understand each other better. Oh, there is also that little subplot of the smugglers wanting “their” artifact back. By the movie’s end, everything is neatly wrapped up and we feel warm and fuzzy at the father and son’s reconnection and growth.
So did I like the Vice Versa (1988) movie?
Yeah. But I think I liked it more in the ’80s. Back when I was younger and less opinionated, I could just appreciate something for what it was instead of what I wanted it to be. There was a rash of body-swap movies in that decade (and even Freaky Friday in the decade prior) and this one isn’t the worst of the bunch. It’s not the best either. Sorry, it’s just hard—if not impossible—to top Tom Hanks in Big (1988). But it’s certainly better than Like Father, Like Son (1987).
One trope of the 1980s was to use the Far East as a way of explaining mystical artifacts (as with Big Trouble in Little China (1986), The Golden Child (1986), and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), but Indiana Jones did it well). Or even not explaining them all that much. It was as if saying something came from Thailand or some southeast Pacific island that Americans can’t point out on a map was explanation enough. This movie needed a plot device and the artifact (a decorative skull that I admit would be pretty cool in a collection) was that device. However, adding it necessitated the silly subplot with the smugglers. I wish the movie could’ve avoided this trope.
Reinhold and Savage gave effective performances and, for me, Reinhold’s was the better of the two. Savage always excelled at playing precocious kids, so he wasn’t playing against type. He wasn’t all that endearing as a child though. Reinhold has proven more than once that he’s got versatility. He was a bit of a smarmy and successful banker in Gremlins (1984), a straight-laced, but kind, detective in Beverly Hills Cop (1984), and a goofy misfit in Stripes (1981). But Vice Versa was a movie where he got to showcase his full range and that’s what carried the movie. I believed him as a father, as a businessman, as a boyfriend, and as a child. Savage was effective, but there was no way he could have carried this movie on his own. His scenes as an 11-year-old didn’t stand up to his scenes as an adult.
As a retrospective rating, I give it 3 out of 5 stars. It’s worth watching, but not worth going out of your way for it. I was surprised to learn that this movie is based on a novel published in 1882. I attribute my surprise to the fact that the movie doesn’t acknowledge this book anywhere in its credits. You can get the Kindle version for free at Amazon. Vice Versa or A Lesson to Fathers. That novel was the impetus for many body-swap movies.
