The Change-Up

2 Stars

The Change-Up is over the plate, but has too few moments of real screwball unpredictability.

And it isn't even a baseball flick.

Mistitled or not, The Change-Up is a persona-swapping fantasy comedy -- set in Atlanta but with no real sense of place -- in which lifelong best buddies, living what seem diametrically opposed lifestyles, accidentally switch bodies (sort of) and thus get to see how the other half lives.

Jason Bateman is Dave, a married father of three little ones and a sleep-deprived, buttoned-down lawyer working hard to close a deal that should get him the promotion to partner of his prestigious law firm that he has long sought.

Ryan Reynolds plays Mitch, his best friend, a bottom-swimming actor and hedonistic, irresponsible womanizer whose development has not only been arrested but given a seeming life sentence.

One drunken evening, while discussing how much each of them envies the grass-is-greener life that the other is living, they utter something simultaneously ("I wish I had your life.") -- while publicly urinating (don't ask) -- and, following a momentous stroke of lightning, wake up the next day having switched personalities or souls or essences or psyches or somethings while retaining their respective bodies.

That is, they look like themselves but act and talk like each other.

So, until they can undo the damage and confusion, in ways not worth detailing here, they will have to live out each other's lives, both living out fantasies they have articulated and confronting situations they're not equipped to handle -- until they can return to normality having learned a valuable life lesson.

The supporting cast includes Leslie Mann, who is terrific both comedically and dramatically, nearly stealing the movie as Jamie, Dave's wife, as well as Olivia Wilde as Dave's attractive legal associate and the underemployed Alan Arkin as Mitch's estranged dad.

Director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers, Fred Claus, Shanghai Knights), working from an uneven, uninspired screenplay by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (who wrote The Hangover), handles the magic-realism element adroitly enough, by not making a big deal out of it and not even trying to anchor it in reality.

But we too often sense the push for the kind of boundary-pushing outrageousness that serves as an attention getter but that felt a lot more organic and raunchy-for-a-reason in, say, Wedding Crashers.

Dobkin's mandate, apparently, was to trot out an overly familiar conceit (think of Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, Like Father Like Son, Big, 17 Again, 13 Going on 30, All of Me, The Hot Chick, Switch, Prelude to a Kiss, just to name a few too many), but take it in an R-rated direction. And Dobkin has certainly done that, for better or worse, embracing the shock-value gods by employing adult language, scatological interactions, and prominent nudity with self-conscious zeal.

His inclusion of obvious CGI effects for some early, cheap, and awkward sight gags involving the kids undercuts any semblance of reality that the flimsy premise is capable of containing, and is the first instance among many of director Dobkin attempting to bridge a narrative gap that a more skilled and thoughtful script would have tended to.

In Bateman and Reynolds, Dobkin has two talented comedic actors who are perhaps not different enough in style to get full mileage out of the contrasting "impersonations" they're called on to offer. But at least they know how to get laughs and seem to be enjoying the chance to show other colors: when they switch characters, Bateman gets to display a down-and-dirty side while Reynolds demonstrates that he can dial down the smarmy self-confidence. They're both better than the screenplay allows them to be.

But it's a woman, Mann, who is the movie's best feature, somehow managing to transcend the synthetic material and give a pivotal supporting performance that's not only funny and moving but almost astonishing in its naturalness and authenticity.

Call The Change-Up a hit-or-miss switcheroo comedy: promising pitch, not much follow-through.

 

     RSS

 

"The Change-Up" Movie Trailer

 

"The Change-Up" Movie Review

 

MPAA rating: R (pervasive strong crude sexual content and language, some graphic nudity and drug use).

Running time: 1:53.

Cast: Ryan Reynolds (Mitch); Jason Bateman (Dave); Leslie Mann (Jamie); Olivia Wilde (Sabrina); Craig Bierko (Valtan); Alan Arkin (Mitch's dad).

Credits: Directed by David Dobkin; written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore; produced by David Dobkin and Neal H. Moritz. A Universal Pictures release.

 

     RSS

 

 

more MOVIE REVIEWS ...

Recent Movie Reviews - Films in Theaters

 

Planet of The Apes

Rise of The Planet of The Apes
Michael Phillips

"Rise of The Planet of The Apes" follows a pharmaceutical researcher (James Franco) on a mission to develop a drug to cure Alzheimer's. He takes in an orphaned lab chimp, Caesar, who ends up responding extraordinarily well to the trial drug. The resulting 'rise' plays out

Rise of The Planet of The Apes
Bill Wine

Say hello once again to the apes of wrath. Yep, they're on the rise: here are the creatures we came to know in 1968 in the original Planet of the Apes and subsequently in four sequels, then encountered again a decade ago in the remake. Now comes a reboot of the basic concept in a prequel

 

The Change-Up

The Change-Up
Michael Phillips

'The Change-Up' is a weak and uninteresting farce. Jason Bateman, playing a workaholic lawyer, and Ryan Reynolds, playing his bongaholic buddy, magically change places while peeing in a fountain one drunken evening

The Change-Up
Bill Wine

This is a persona-swapping fantasy comedy in which lifelong best buddies, living what seem diametrically opposed lifestyles, switch bodies and thus get to see how the other half lives. Jason Bateman is a married father and a sleep-deprived, buttoned-down lawyer. Ryan Reynolds plays his best friend, a bottom-swimming actor and hedonistic womanizer

 

The Guard

The Guard
Betsy Sharkey

In 'The Guard,' Gleeson's Gerry Boyle teams up with a visiting American FBI agent, played by Don Cheadle, to chase down (in an ambling sort of way) a rumored half-billion dollars' worth of cocaine smuggled into Ireland by a trio of bad 'uns, notably the icy-eyed killer played by Mark Strong

 

The Devil's Double

The Devil's Double
Bill Wine

It is 1987 in betrayal- and corruption-choked Baghdad. Decorated army lieutenant Latif Yahia is summoned to Saddam Hussein's palace and ordered to become the body double for the decadent, sadistic, and megalomaniacal Uday Saddam Hussein

 

Copyright © 2011 Tribune Media Services, Inc.