The Change Up (2011)

The Change up is a film that I avoided at the cinema. I did this not for any moral outrage or vindictive motives, I simply thought that it didn't look very good, and whilst yes, I went to see much worse films at earlier times, there was a lot out at the time and I simply never got that bored. It's a shame really because I think that Jason Bateman is a great actor, and I tend to enjoy his performance in most things, not lease because of his role as Michael Bluthe in the fantastic Arrested Development TV Show which is thankfully making a return. This film also, however, stars Ryan Reynolds, a man who has impressed me in one film, Buried, where he proved that he actually can act, so why does he insist on playing roles like these all the time when he is capable of much more.

Anyway, the film is a tired old concept of body switching, we've seen it before in things like Freaky Friday, but this is aimed at a whole different audience, the teenage boy. It's not that the film is juvenile, or that juvenile is necessarily a bad thing, but it's more that the film doesn't always pull it off. For example, toward the start of the film a baby projectile poos into Jason Bateman's face. It, I can only assume, is supposed to be a comedy highlight of the film, but is instead unnecessarily gross for no particular reason. Anyway, through peeing in a fountain together Bateman and Reynolds swap bodies, and lives. The two of them having wildly differing lives, one a high flying lawyer, and the other an actor whose big break is in soft core pornos. The two being friends is explained only by the fact that they've known each other for years.

The film goes along a perfectly predictable path, the two firstly hate their new lives, trying to find a way out of them, one hates hard work, the other hates being away from work and family. However, as the film goes on they realise that not only are they starting to like their new lives, but that their old lives were too extreme. By this I mean that the lesson they learn is that everything is good in moderation. Whilst working hard has rewards, you must find time to relax or you will drive away your friends and family. YAWN. Seriously, it's as though the plot was devised by a plot machine who looked at bad TV and used it as a basis for new screenplays. It's a tired concept that quite frankly was the worst thing about the film, however true it may be.

The film is not without its moments, there are some moments which are quite amusing, some of them are the juvenile moments which appealed the young boy in me, others showed genuine heart, however, these moments were few and far between and ultimately ended up showing us what the film could have been, making the rest of the film seem even less clever by comparison. It's not a film I am proud to have watched and it is not a film I will ever be watching again, it's a film that passed a couple of lunch breaks away at work and nothing more. Avoid if you can.