The Change-Up

I’ll start this review by getting some inevitable movie mentions out of the way. First, there’s Gary Nelson’s “Freaky Friday” (1976), its 2003 remake, Brian Gilbert’s “Vice Versa” (1988), Tom Brady’s “The Hot Chick” (2002), Penny Marshall’s “Big” (1988) and Rod Daniel’s “Like Father, Like Son” (1987).

As you may know, these are all body-switch films; they are movies in which one character, through some mysterious turn of events, finds themselves trapped in the body of another character, and vice versa. “The Change-Up” is a body-switch film, and it connects the dots of its plot with the same methods employed by each of the aforementioned films; still, it’s one of the better entries in this typically generic subgenre.

Our two protagonists are best buds Mitch and Dave, played by Ryan Reynolds (“Green Lantern”) and Jason Bateman (“The Switch”) respectively. As is required for the plot, these characters are complete opposites, fixed with widely opposing morals and mindsets, which unsurprisingly results in calamities when the body switch occurs.

Mitch is a loose cannon. He’s unemployed, he’s foul-mouthed, he’s overly laid-back, he’s highly sexual and is constantly inappropriate. He spends his days getting laid and getting high in his dump of an apartment. He’s thought of by others as a quitter, never finishing anything he starts. He’s a lazy, uncommitted slacker who never quite left his college dorm room.

Dave, on the other hand, is a responsible family man. He has a wife (Leslie Mann, “Funny People”), three kids and a lovely home. He’s a successful lawyer, though he finds his job tiring and stressful, and is constantly kept from spending quality time with his family. He has to juggle many responsibilities every single day of his life, and he’s a little tired of it.

During one night of drinking and complaining about their lives, Mitch and Dave together pee in a magic fountain and proclaim that they wish they could have each other’s lives. And then, hey presto, both of them wake up the next morning in the other’s body. Side note: I’m curious as to how the wizard or whatever came to the conclusion that in order for this magic fountain to work, two individuals must pee into the water together.

So, Mitch is Dave, and Dave is Mitch; the audience must remember this for the rest of the movie. Reynolds and Bateman have obviously had to study each other’s traits and mannerisms as they essentially play each other for the majority of the movie. Reynolds switches from “douchebag” to “tool,” and Bateman switches from “tool” to “douchebag.” Got that?

This inevitably leads to many humorous situations; the best thing you can say about “The Change-Up” is that it is very, very funny. The leading duo get into plenty of side-splitting, R-rated shenanigans together as they are forced to live each other’s lives and impersonate each other. Of course, both characters have big events coming up; Dave has a big important business deal, while Mitch has a big important acting gig. You will receive no reward for guessing that both end badly.

Yes, it’s generic and predictable; this is the kind of movie you walk into very much expecting relentless predictability. Body-swap movies have been around since the ‘70s, and every nook and cranny of the subgenre that could be explored has already been explored. However, director David Dobkin (“The Wedding Crashers”) and writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (“The Hangover”) attempt to breathe new life into this near-dead area of cinema by cramming in as much rude, crude, gross-out humour as humanly possible, with mixed results.

One the one hand, I got a chuckle out of Dave having projectile baby diarrhoea squirted into his mouth, pointlessly disgusting as it was. I also chuckled at a scene in which Dave (in Mitch’s body) finds himself acting in a light porno film and sliding his thumb inside a woman‘s anus. On the other hand, watching a baby playing with kitchen knives made me uncomfortable. Also, watching and listening to Leslie Mann noisily voiding her bowels is more nauseating than funny. Because of this, it is at times that it feels Lucas and Moore are doing nothing more than trying to be filthy and offensive, which does not necessarily equal funny.

But what ultimately makes “The Change-Up” work is the charm that comes so naturally to Reynolds and Bateman. Together, they bring a heap of energy to their roles and work perfectly as a comic double-act; they’re effortlessly entertaining comedic actors who help us to look over the writers’ frustrating desperation to always be shocking.

6/10