Quick Movie Review: The Change-Up

The story is unoriginal and the setup is very much rushed, but where it lacks in the screenplay it makes up for in its amazing talent. Reynolds is at as close to the top of his game as I've pretty much ever seen him and Bateman taking a break from the straight-man and does an excellent job being the second banana for once. I mean, a lot of the character depth was told to us via other characters rather than actually shown to us, but when it was shown to us it was really funny. 

Although most people have drawn the recycled body-switching story to the likes of Freaky Friday, I feel that although similar, the two films serve a very different purpose. Instead of stepping in someone else's shoes to better understand who they are as a person and where they are coming from, this film allows the characters to step into each other's shoes so that they can come to a better understanding of themselves and what they need to do different in their own lives. It makes the characters more self-aware and challenges them to see what those closest to them feel that they need to do differently. Sure, it's not as world changing, but just as important to the individuals and in making others in their lives really appreciate them more.

I will say, however, that this film does tend to ignore much of the morality that has come into question when switching bodies and seems to leave the audience still concerned about how they were resolved. And this film suffers some minor plot holes very early on, such as the fact that when Dave's wife is asking him questions that only he would know, she asks him what her favorite color is and when their anniversary is. Not sure why she would think that his best friend wouldn't also know these things, but it seems as though the whole scenario with them trying to convince her that their bodies switched was forgotten about too quickly by her character and that she should have started reconsidering it at some point throughout her husband's crazy and out-of-character antics. Also, towards the end, why was she so willing to let "Mitchell" kiss her when she still didn't know what was going on. 

This film may not be perfect, but I was laughing pretty consistently throughout and never found myself bored or uninterested.

Twizard Rating: 77