Go back to the 1980s and 1990s and Judge Reinhold was a big name in comedy. Perhaps, most famously, he starred in Beverly Hills Cop alongside Eddie Murphy. However, his career didn't quite reach the heights it could have thanks to one movie.
Reinhold believes the film Vice Versa was a stain on his career and in many ways stopped him in his tracks as an actor. He would follow that up with more Beverly Hills Cop and The Santa Clause franchise. But he never quite found the same traction. The film starred Reinhold and Fred Save in a father-son body-swap comedy.
Speaking with Vanity Fair, Reinhold said the film was sabotaged. He said, "Not the film itself, but what happened to it. It was basically an executive murder plot. David Puttnam, who produced Chariots of Fire, became the head of Columbia Pictures, and we all loved him because he was a creative and he had done indies. The downside with David was he wanted to bring the price of lead actors down, but make the backend profits real. I believed him. I really did. And he wasn't, unfortunately, around long enough to prove that formula."
Judge Reinhold Opens Up
Reinhold said that he didn't realize another movie with a similar premise was being filmed at the same time. He said, "What happened was Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron's Like Father Like Son. Tri-Star Pictures threw that movie into production while we were already shooting. And Coca-Cola owned both companies. When I started the film, I knew that that was a risk to be so closely identified with the other ones. I know that it was a premise that had been done before. I didn't know about the Dudley Moore movie."
However, according to Reinhold, producer David Puttnam had rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. When he advocated for the film, Puttnam ended up dooming it.
He said, "David went public with his disdain for how high the salaries were and what he wanted to do, and he pissed a lot of people off. By the time we were ready to be released, he was in front of Coca-Cola saying, look, [Vice Versa] is so much better. Just hold on the release of the Dudley Moore movie. He didn't know, but the guillotine had been set. People didn't like him, so they wanted him out."
Reinhold would continue to act and find roles, but he believes the film harmed his career.
