The Change-Up: No Surprises, Full of Fun

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: over-the-top slacker and his straight-edge, married father-of-three best friend swap bodies after urinating in a magic fountain and, along the way, learn that valuable lesson that begat us these timeless words of wisdom: “the grass is always greener.”

Okay, so perhaps you haven’t seen exactly this movie, but The Change-Up offers zero surprises in the plot department so you might as well have. In fact, the only new selling point that this big summer comedy can provide is that it’s rated Hard-R, the unofficial designation for when a film truly earns that Restricted rating, wearing it like a badge of honor as it populates the on-screen antics with copious amounts of everything that the MPAA deems unsuitable for our under-18 youths (read: sex, nudity, talking about sex and nudity, etc.). This isn’t one of those movies that gets slapped with the (typically) revenue-reducing “R” because of one F-bomb two too many. Screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore dig deep into their vast knowledge of all things Farrelly Brothers, combine it with their own man-child sensibilities as exemplified by their previous smash hit The Hangover, add a dose of Freaky Friday and voila! Welcome to The Change-Up.

Now, I know you don’t watch a body swap movie for something original. It’s one of those sub-genres of comedy that follows its formula to a tee, essentially a Mad Libs for Movies. When ______ and ______ swap bodies after __________, they each have to pretend to be ________ while trying to find a way to reverse the _______ and inevitably grow up in the process learning that ________ is more important than ______.  That’s it. And that’s all there is to The Change-Up, too. (If that ruins it for you, you need to see more movies.) If we don’t watch these movies for their advanced storytelling techniques, then it’s for the fresh ways that the filmmakers tell their familiar fable – meaning, likeable characters and hilariously awkward moments of mistaken identity. Based on that metric of quality, The Change-Up ranks somewhere around 17 Again. 

Once you walk into a body swap movie you have to check your logic at the door and just accept that this whole situation is possible. Then, it’s up to the actors to sell it, which Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman nail. Both are extremely likeable stars, who we love to see doing their respective schticks: Reynolds’ sarcastic, eternal frat-boy with the heart of gold, and Bateman as the dry, uptight worrier. The fun part is that set-up is only in the first act since, being a body swap movie, obviously, means that the rest of the flick they’re each playing the other character. Actually, this ends up being more of a double body swap because Bateman ends up playing Dave, the married lawyer on the verge of becoming partner who is trapped in the body of Reynolds’ stoner, Mitch, who is himself an immature 14-year-old boy trapped in a thirtysomething’s body. 

While both have fun doing the opposite of what they usually do, it ends up being Bateman’s movie. He manages to take Mitch’s antics (Reynolds’ character as portrayed by Bateman) and adds just enough pathos to them so that he doesn’t come across like a total psychopath, which is the line that Reynolds’ narrowly skirts in his portrayal of the lorno (light porno, think late-night Cinemax) actor. Sure, we expect him to be gratingly inappropriate, cursing around children, and going through women like they’re cheap sunglasses. But there’s way more Alan from The Hangover in this character than Van Wilder. We like Reynolds even though he could be the grown-up version of that super-senior you remember from high school who picked up all the hot freshmen girls without being overly icky about it, because he’s so self-aware and self-deprecating. Not so in this one as Mitch. Here, he’s just clueless as to how outrageously wrong he acts in public – and in private, as it were. It leads to ridiculous moments that usually end up being funny.

And that’s the biggest knock on this one: it’s not really hilarious nor particularly memorable. Plenty of chuckles and laughs but no good rolling over, hold-your-stomach belly laughs that you want to see from this type of flick. And as it goes into that second act sequence where the laughs die out and the dramatic emotion gets amped up, it’s clear that the writers and director David Dobkin were channeling Judd Apatow – not just because his betrothed, Leslie Mann, plays Dave’s wife – but, also in treading familiar story territory as in Knocked Up, to the point where Mann essentially plays the exact same character only with more crying and nudity. (Yup, this is hard-R for a reason. Also, Olivia Wilde does her part – not as much – to keep it from going down into the PG-13 realm.) 

Again, the focus is on Bateman as Mitch since Mitch is the one in dire need of some life lessons. This is a guy who picks up women at single mother’s Lamaze classes, tells Dave’s daughter (while he’s in Dave’s body) that you always solve problems with violence, and sexually harasses pretty much everyone – especially Wilde’s law associate, Sabrina. He also has a broken relationship with his father, a non-career starring in cable smut, and a serious dependence on the herbal refreshment. Meanwhile, Dave is too busy putting work ahead of his family, neglecting his marriage the most. Other than that, he’s successful, smart, driven, and a great father. Mitch needs most of the movie to come to the realization that perhaps, just maybe, he should finally grow up just a bit while Dave tempts himself with Olivia Wilde and, well, you can probably guess how that all turns out. Remember what I said before, you’re not watching The Change-Up for surprises. 

In a summer surprisingly (and refreshingly) dominated by the R-rated comedy, The Change-Up has plenty of capable competition, leaving it overshadowed somewhere in the middle of the pack as an entertaining bit of non-groundbreaking filmic diversion that will be played ad nauseum in neutered form on USA Network for years to come, yet will always remain second-tier to its cinematic predecessors The Hangover and Wedding Crashers.