Rating:  

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin, Mircea Monroe, Gregory Itzin, Ned Schmidtke, Lo Ming, Sydney Rouviere, Andrea Moore, Craig Bierko, Matthew Cornwell.
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Director: David Dobkin
Rating: R
Running Time: 112 Mins.
Release Date: August 5, 2011
Home Video Release Date: November 8, 2011
Box Office: $37.0 Million
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Big Kid Pictures, Original Film, Relativity Media, and Universal Pictures.

Written by: Jon Lucas and Scott Moore

Worthy of their own shelf in a video store (if any still remain in existence), or segregated out under their own heading in a Netflix queue, the “Switched-Identity” film has been exhausted countless times over and over for decades now. Few have been classics (Big, Being John Malkovich), others have been abysmal (Like Father, Like Son), but most have been, at best, forgettable and mediocre. After the arrival of “The Change-Up”, it is safe to say that, to the best of my knowledge, none have ever been as vulgar and arrogant.

Featuring Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds as the childhood friends who wake up one morning as the other person, “The Change-Up” finds Bateman’s Dave Lockwood and Reynolds’ Mitch Planko as men on two distinctly different paths in life. Dave is married to the beautiful Jamie (Leslie Mann) and the father of three children – a 6-year old girl, Cara, and a set of boy and girl twins. Mitch is an out-of-work softcore adult film actor who spends his day playing video games, smoking a lot of herb, and cruising bars and scoring with woman after woman. He has so many ladies at his apparent beck and call, he must schedule them out. Sigh.

Dave is a dedicated father, who alternates getting up at 3:30 a.m. with Jamie every morning and is a workaholic securities lawyer who has sacrificed a great deal of family time in an effort to make partner. Mitch is often just hitting his stride at 3:30 a.m. each morning and after his father (Alan Arkin) pays him a visit and informs him that he is getting married one more time, we learn that Mitch is viewed as a failure and a disappointment from perhaps the only person left who could defend Mitch’s childish behavior. Sigh again.

Dave feels emasculated and in his late-30′s, feels he rushed into marriage and kids and career and is beyond envious of Mitch’s carefree ways. Mitch agrees with Dave at first, but out together on a bar-hopping night, Mitch tries to convince Dave that he has a great life and that Mitch would kill to have what he has. Then, they decide to urinate together in a public fountain and collectively blurt out, “I wish I had your life…” or something like that. It’s in the trailer. You can check my memory if need be.

And so, yes. Mitch wakes up in Dave’s body and Dave wakes up in Mitch’s body. Panic ensues. They rush back to the fountain to try and reverse the effects with another public urination session, but the city has dug up the fountain, are relocating it, and its whereabouts are unknown. They try to tell Jamie what happened and she thinks they are being goofy and making a stupid joke. And then more panic ensues. Dave is the lead presenter for a team of a dozen or so lawyers on a huge $700 million merger between two companies and his presentation is the deciding factor on not only the deal going through, but his making partner. Mitch has a booty call with the mysterious Tatiana at 9:00 p.m. Each must help the other out and the juxtaposition of lives and different personalities make for wacky and whimsical hijinks. Loud sigh.

Here’s the main problem with “The Change-Up”. It’s not that the film can’t go 10 words without someone cursing. Doesn’t bother me. The nudity and the sexual situations and constant peurile attitude and tone is tiresome and exhausting but accepted when you buy in to something like this. It’s not that it lacks humorous moments. Jason Bateman is ferociously funny when he embodies Mitch and it is refreshing watching Bateman finally cut loose and break away from the only-sensible-man-in-the-room act he has played since his stint on TV’s “Arrested Development” in 2002. No. The problem with “The Change-Up” is that it has no focus and no direction and is borderline misogynistic towards the only empathetic character in the film – Jamie, Dave’s quietly suffering wife.

With “The Change Up” and their earlier comedy this year, “The Hangover Part II”, it is becoming rapidly apparent that screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore struck gold with 2009′s “The Hangover” and are either trying way too hard to replicate their success with that film or perhaps, they are really just mean-spirited individuals whose schtick has wore woefully thin. While it is great seeing Bateman ad-lib and riff inappropriately and Reynolds play Bateman’s straight man persona, there is an underlying tone of meanness and joylessness that permeates through each passing minute. Moreover, I started to wonder how Dave and Mitch could truly ever be friends with such divergent personalities. Reynolds and Bateman make it work, but it sure feels like they had to use every ounce of comedic acting they had in them to hold this film together as much as they do.

I don’t know. With some distance away from “The Change Up”, I now like it a whole lot less than when I first viewed it. Those in attendance at my screening sure had a good time with it and in the moment, I chuckled heartily as I indicated. But when the inevitable tug at the heartstrings arrives in the final 15 minutes or so, it just feels false…off…flat…as if Lucas and Moore were just toying with us the whole time. And they probably are. “The Change-Up” looks ugly and nasty compared to the other nasty and heavy R-rated comedies that have come before it in 2011. Stand this up next to “Bridesmaids” and it looks painfully inadequate. Set it alongside the virtual shot-by-shot remake of “The Hangover” and this looks just as bad if not worse.

Simply working in adult content to a comedy and going for shock value is empty without context. Bateman and Reynolds try, but the context with “The Change-Up” is evasive and the film is an arrogant exercise in manliness gone painfully awry.

Should I See It?

Fans of adult comedies have their latest selection. If you enjoyed “The Hangover Part II” from earlier in 2011 and have seen “Bridesmaids”, “Horrible Bosses”, “Friends With Benefits”, “No Strings Attached”, and “Bad Teacher”, line up or push play.

Jason Bateman is terrific and although he is often fantastic in his films, seeing him cut loose and destroy as Ryan Reynolds’ sophomoric manchild character is the film’s saving grace.

Leslie Mann is actually quite good, even though the film seems to have no compassion for her whatsoever.

“The Change-Up” is a brash and mean-spirited exercise akin to the guy who throws down drink after drink in the local bar for the express purpose of starting a fight before going home for the night. Yeah, this movie is that guy.

What good it has in the performances of Bateman and Reynolds is squandered with a rambling wreck of a film that has no empathy towards a character exhibiting real and relatable marriage trouble and expects us to feel for two guys in a scientifically impossible situation. Well played.

I have hit the saturation point with the screenwriters from “The Hangover”…this seems to show that they had one good movie in them and will forever try and recreate that success. Lucky us…