The Change-Up

[BillBrasky]

Release Date: August 5, 2011
Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: David Dobkin
Screenwriter: Jon Lucas, Scott Moore
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin
Genre: Comedy
MPAA Rating: Not Available

Plot Summary: Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman star in "The Change-Up," from director David Dobkin ("Wedding Crashers"), writers Jon Lucas & Scott Moore ("The Hangover") and producer Neal Moritz ("Fast & Furious," "Click"). The R-rated comedy takes the traditional body-switching movie, ties it up tightly and throws it off a cliff.

Growing up together, Mitch (Reynolds) and Dave (Bateman) were inseparable best friends, but as the years have passed they've slowly drifted apart. While Dave is an overworked lawyer, husband and father of three, Mitch has remained a single, quasi-employed man-child who has never met a responsibility he liked. To Mitch, Dave has it all: beautiful wife Jamie (Leslie Mann), kids who adore him and a high-paying job at a prestigious law firm. To Dave, living Mitch's stress free life without obligation or consequence would be a dream come true.

Following a drunken night out together, Mitch and Dave's worlds are turned upside down when they wake up in each other's bodies and proceed to freak the &*#@ out.

Despite the freedom from their normal routines and habits, the guys soon discover that each other's lives are nowhere near as rosy as they once seemed. Further complicating matters are Dave's sexy legal associate, Sabrina (Olivia Wilde), and Mitch's estranged father (Alan Arkin). With time not on their side, Mitch and Dave comically struggle to avoid completely destroying each other's lives before they can find a way to get their old ones back.

Red band trailer:

[aenemaTron]

&*#@

[BillBrasky]

Comingsoon.net's censorship, not mine.

I usually don't mind gross-out stuff in comedies, but does the end of this trailer make anyone else kind of physically ill? I really don't want to think about Leslie Mann on the toilet.

[Gluehead]

I usually don't mind gross-out stuff in comedies, but does the end of this trailer make anyone else kind of physically ill? I really don't want to think about Leslie Mann on the toilet.

The whole movie is overly reliant on gross-out humour like that. It opens with an awful pre-title poop joke and then continues to throw in every lowbrow situation you could possibly think of, and some of them already done to death - there's a pube-trimming gag in here that's exact recreation of the same joke done in She's Out of My League and The Virginity Hit. What's even more frustrating is that the moments where they don't just settle for the easiest joke possible can actually be pretty funny. Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds are great in this, they're clearly giving it their all even when they've got poop flying in their face or their fingers stuck in disgusting locations, and the moments where the movie just focuses on their interactions together are good. When they first discover they've switched bodies, Ryan Reynolds reacts by simply trying to strangle Jason Bateman in icy silence and it's hilarious. There are great scenes like that peppered throughout but they're surrounded by jokes that feel like they were lifted from direct-to-DVD American Pie sequels. Also, it's nearly 2 hours long, which is kind of insane.

Not as awful as it could've been, not as good as it should've been.

[smartbunny]

Yeah. I don't know about this one.

[RoyalDutchOfDukes]

Why am I the only one outraged that they did a Freaky Friday with two dudes who are the same age?

[BillBrasky]

I was a little worried about this. The movie was directed by the guy who did "Wedding Crashers" and written by the two guys who wrote "The Hangover", and when you think about it, that's not the greatest pedigree in the world. I would argue that the success of the first "Hangover" was more because of Todd Phillips' direction and the performances than the script necessarily (especially when you look at some of the other movies those two guys have written- "Four Christmases", "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past").

Also, unless it's a Judd Apatow movie, comedies should not be two hours long. I saw "Friends with Benefits" yesterday and that was close to two hours too. Anything enjoyable about the movie (and there were a few scenes that were funny) was kind of destroyed by the need to stretch things out to fill up two hours.

[BillBrasky]

Gluehead's review was right on the money. This movie is just filled with puerile sex and bathroom jokes, with very little wit or cleverness. The low point is a scene where Jason Bateman-as-Ryan Reynolds ends up having to shoot a porn movie with a hideously ugly 80-year old woman; at that point, the movie sank to a Dane Cook-in-"Good Luck Chuck" level. Also, it was really surprising to see Leslie Mann do not one, but two gratuitous nude scenes- I really would have thought she had reached a point in her career where she was an established enough actress that she wouldn't need to do something like that.

That being said, there were a few halfway funny sequences- one scene where Reynolds in Bateman's body has to sing a "dinner song" at dinner, a song that Bateman always sings to his kids that Reynolds doesn't know- so he has to make it up on the spot; that was pretty funny. Overall though this movie had a serious case of "try too hard"-itis- trying way too hard to be raunchy and shocking, the comparison to a direct-to-DVD American Pie movie was spot on.