Trading Teenage Places
After scamming people out of their possessions by masquerading as a boy scout, Freddie Egan (Jason Weaver - The Jacksons: An American Dream) finds himself sentenced by a judge to spend summer at a juvenile detention facility. Meanwhile it is end of term for spoiled rich kid Frederick Egan III (Rider Strong) but it isn't going to be summer spent with his wealthy father but at a summer camp amongst the rich kids. Unfortunately at the transport depot there is a mix up over the names and whilst Freddie ends up rubbing shoulders with the spoilt rich kids Frederick ends up with the juvenile delinquents.
I know I have them and I am sure others do too, those movies which I watched during summer holidays as a young teen which now have nostalgic memories of being good despite having not watched them since then. I am pretty sure that "Summertime Switch" is one of those movies for those who were young teens in 1994 as this is a simple family comedy with confusion, misbehaving, bad guys and various other family movie comedy staples. As such on one side we have fly guy Freddie not only trying it on with the rich kids, whilst dealing with a couple of bully kids, and on the other we have Frederick trying to escape from the detention centre and learning some lessons about how spoilt and annoying he is. It is routine stuff which as now a grown up didn't really entertain me that much.
What "Summertime Switch" has is two decent young actors with Jason Weaver giving plenty of attitude whilst Rider Strong seems to be channelling some Dan Aykroyd, in fact Jason Weaver does give Frederick a touch of the Eddie Murphy as well. But these characters are not the most memorable just fun in the moment, as is Casey Sander as the detention centre warden.
What this all boils down to is that "Summertime Switch" is simply a fun movie for young teens which is understandably very 90s in style and might still amuse not just those who have memories of watching it when they were young but also young teenagers now.
