The Change-Up [Review by Haus]

The Change-Up is a film we’ve all seen before. Two oh-so-different people trade places and live one another’s lives for a little while, learning oh-so-much in the process. Hilarity ensues, and so forth. The Change Up is unvarnished and flatly unoriginal in this regard, a truth the filmmakers seem at peace with. I’m more or less at peace with it, too. It’s an alright film, notable mainly for its particularly crude though often off-mark R-rated humor. It doesn’t deliver anything special, but it’s largely watchable and has a couple of sharp lines. I didn’t always hate it. (And this week, I’m afraid that’s as good as it gets.)

Here, Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds swap selves. Bateman plays a fancypants attorney at what appears to be Hotlanta’s answer to a white-shoe law firm. (He went to Princeton and Yale Law, we’re told. Like that ever happens.) Reynolds plays your typical bon vivant lothario, a less polished and decidedly less sage-like version of Ryan Gosling’s character in Crazy, Stupid, Love. Bateman’s life is marital-ho-hum with a side of toddler souffle, whereas Reynolds galavants about bedding hotties and acting like an oversex[t]ed tween. While out drinking, the two urinate in a fountain (presided over by a stern-looking plaster angel) and awake to find — well, you get the idea.

The real challenge for a film like this is twofold: First, the characters should be distinct enough that the actors actually behave differently when the switch occurs; second, the film needs to mine the juxtaposition for some trite life lessons, comedy gold, or both.

The film falls short on the first criterion: despite desperate efforts, Reynolds and Bateman just aren’t dissimilar enough as characters to supply any “gee whiz” moments when they ostensibly switch brains. (Mother/daughter worked; rich/poor worked twice; this doesn’t.) Instead of a swap, it often plays more like the characters are high, drunk, or weird. This is pretty much a cardinal sin for a swap-out pic.

On the second front — life lessons and comedy — it’s not altogether terrible, but it’s at times strained and could have been a good deal better. A recurring gimmick is placing each character opposite a relative — a wife, a father — to hear, incognito, what that person really thinks of them. This fly on the wall moment is a potentially potent trick — after all, who wouldn’t secretly kill to hear what others really think? — but it’s squandered here. We learn that Bateman is a workaholic and that Reynolds is a “quitter” (man, 2011 is the year of the quitting for Reynolds). Whoop de doo. As for comedy, some funny moments crop up, though a bunch eat floor.

The two chase around town searching for the fountain — it’s been moved, see — hoping to spring another catalytic leak and thereby port back into one another. This strange missing-fountain subplot involves a lot of telephone calls and queuing up in city records departments and is an utter waste of time. And why bother? The whole switcheroo premise is fairly silly to begin with (a fortune cookie and a trip to the bathroom worked for Curtis and Lohan) and I simply can’t believe the audience would begrudge these fellows simply switching back when it’s time, especially if this spared even one pointless scene of them standing in line at city hall.

In the end, Reynolds and Bateman (predictably) come to appreciate aspects of one another’s lives, but (predictably) elect to return to their own. I guess they learn something in the process, but it’s far less than you might expect — far less than, say, Lohan and Curtis in Freaky Friday or Nicolas Cage in the Family Man. (I know, he switched with himself — I’m counting it anyway.) And Bateman’s character gets the short end of this switch, as Reynolds tears through his friend’s life like a hurricane wreaking cringeworthy destruction both marital and professional. (On the other hand, the most Reynolds stands to lose is a single hot hookup.)

As actors, Bateman and Reynolds aren’t quite on their game, probably because each is trying without much success to ape the other. The jokes are surprisingly sexual, scatological and even racially charged, and there’s a substantial amount of female toplessness to boot. (Women don’t come off particularly well here in general, so if that sort of thing spoils a picture for you, you’ve been warned.) There’s nothing inherently wrong with a little poop in the face humor, I suppose, so long as it’s humor. If a film treads the R-rated path, the jokes, crude though they may be, still must be funny. And many of these are not.

I don’t have a heck of a lot more to say about this picture. If you go to see it, chances are you know what you’re getting into. With that in mind, you may well enjoy it.

HAUS VERDICT: Predictable, surprisingly crude, fairly heartless, and not these actors’ best work – but watchable nonetheless. 

See what the other half thinks:  Parsi’s view.