Movie Review: Summertime Switch

Stars: 1 out of 5

Pros: Growth at the end

Cons: So much to cringe over along the way

The Bottom Line:

A character swap

That could have been amusing

But’s painful to watch

Potential With the Premise, but Potential is Wasted

I hadn’t heard of Summertime Switch until I started listening to Pod Meets World and Ryder Strong talked about this movie he filmed during the hiatus after the first season of Boy Meets World.  I was curious about it, but I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way to watch it except they decided to recap it on the podcast.  They pretty much owe me my hour and a half back.

If you haven’t heard of this ABC movie of the week, there’s a reason.  The premise actually could have been promising.  We first meet Freddie Egan (Jason Weaver), a kid from the wrong side of the tracks who gets picked up yet again for stealing.  He is sentenced to 30 days in a work camp for delinquent youth.

Meanwhile, there’s also Frederick Egan III (Ryder Strong), a spoiled brat of a rich kid who is being sent to camp because his divorced parents are too busy with their own lives to spend any time with him while boarding school is out.

And you can see this coming a mile away, right?  (Granted, the title of the movie helps.)  The two camps are loading up buses at the same location, and Freddie and Frederick wind up at the wrong camps.  What will happen next?

Okay, so you can pretty much predict where the movie is going to wind up, right?  I’ve said it before and I will say it again, I don’t have an issue with predictable as long as I’m having fun along the way.

That wasn’t the case here.

The first half of the movie is extremely cringy.  Think of the worst thing you can think of happening in each storyline, and that’s pretty much what happens.  While I did appreciate the character growth we got in the second half, it came way too quickly and wasn’t earned.

Meanwhile, the characters are nothing but cliches and stereotypes.  Yes, they get better in the second half, but it isn’t enough to overcome that horrible first impression.

Maybe I’m expecting too much out of an hour and a half movie, but it really could have been much better if it had tried.  There was one too many sub-plots for the movie to work.

Not to mention the plot holes in the film.  I kept looking at the characters going how do you not see what is going on?  Especially when it is out there in the open a couple of times.  I’ll go along with a lot of things in movies, but I kept scratching my head wondering why no one pointed out these plot holes that needed to be fixed.

I’m not going to blame the actors for this.  They are let down by a script that needed a serious rewrite.  It was nice to watch Jason Weaver in something since I’ve listened to him for years as the singing voice of young Simba in the original The Lion King.  Among the supporting cast, we had The Brady Bunch’s Barry William’s as Frederick Egan II.

While I did appreciate the character growth, it wasn’t enough to redeem Summertime Swtich.  My advice?  Switch this movie out for another one on your to be watched list.