Sometimes, I am dragged by a friend or a relative to a movie just because we have nothing better to do, or it just fits within our schedule. This movie was one. I had these experiences in recent years with "Stepbrothers" and "The Other Guys" in the months of August, both featuring an overacting Will Ferrell screaming his lines just to look for attention. This month, we have Ryan Reynolds doing his overgrown juvenile delinquent shtick paired with the usually reliable Jason Bateman in "The Change-Up."
Directed by David Dobkin who did the much better and funnier "Wedding Crashers" back in the summer of 2005, he's not sure how to deliver a gross joke anymore, so he has to find every way to overblow it, and he does, along with the performances. This is the gross-out version of the classic body switch and what's-it-like-be-there-and-again movie trend that began in the 1980s with "Peggy Sue Got Married," "Big," and in the last decade, "Freaky Friday," where the 40ish Jamie Lee Curtis stole the show from the then up-and-coming Lindsay Lohan. None of the gags work, and believe me, we were in a very empty, laughless theater with only three other people.
So what do Reynolds and Bateman do? They literally have to do their business outside in a magical water fountain in Atlanta. Both are bored with their lives, even if Reynolds as Mitch, a carefree, irresponsible bachelor currently making "lorno" or "light porno" movies, and Bateman, as Dave, a loving, hardworking, but uptight lawyer and family man. When all that is done, their lives are switched and they start to act like one another. Hence, Bateman loses his cool as the family man and finds himself having an affair with a young legal aide named Sabrina (Olivia Wilde). Reynolds becomes more of a control freak, but still dallies with the ladies nonetheless. Leslie Mann, the wife of Judd Apatow and often cast as the straight woman in Apatow's gross-out movies, is Jamie. She is the confused wife of Bateman wondering why he no longer wants to handle family responsibilities and if he is suddenly possessed by the body of Mitch. In disappointing casting, there is Alan Arkin in a small role as Mitch's father who has plans to remarry, and wants Mitch and Dave to attend. Arkin toils hard to keep a straight face amid this cinematic muck.
The jokes are so puerile, and more often than not,they border on the unwatchable, where Dave as Mitch carelessly handles crying babies and then the babies are in appalling danger. There is often the f-word throughout for forced laughs, and for good measure, nude breasts spurt out as turn-ons. In fact, there is more nudity here than in most of the R-rated party-boy-and-girl comedies in recent years.
This movie won't make you smile or feel good about yourself. It will just make you cringe and hope you get out of this long 105-minute movie.
Directed by David Dobkin who did the much better and funnier "Wedding Crashers" back in the summer of 2005, he's not sure how to deliver a gross joke anymore, so he has to find every way to overblow it, and he does, along with the performances. This is the gross-out version of the classic body switch and what's-it-like-be-there-and-again movie trend that began in the 1980s with "Peggy Sue Got Married," "Big," and in the last decade, "Freaky Friday," where the 40ish Jamie Lee Curtis stole the show from the then up-and-coming Lindsay Lohan. None of the gags work, and believe me, we were in a very empty, laughless theater with only three other people.
So what do Reynolds and Bateman do? They literally have to do their business outside in a magical water fountain in Atlanta. Both are bored with their lives, even if Reynolds as Mitch, a carefree, irresponsible bachelor currently making "lorno" or "light porno" movies, and Bateman, as Dave, a loving, hardworking, but uptight lawyer and family man. When all that is done, their lives are switched and they start to act like one another. Hence, Bateman loses his cool as the family man and finds himself having an affair with a young legal aide named Sabrina (Olivia Wilde). Reynolds becomes more of a control freak, but still dallies with the ladies nonetheless. Leslie Mann, the wife of Judd Apatow and often cast as the straight woman in Apatow's gross-out movies, is Jamie. She is the confused wife of Bateman wondering why he no longer wants to handle family responsibilities and if he is suddenly possessed by the body of Mitch. In disappointing casting, there is Alan Arkin in a small role as Mitch's father who has plans to remarry, and wants Mitch and Dave to attend. Arkin toils hard to keep a straight face amid this cinematic muck.
The jokes are so puerile, and more often than not,they border on the unwatchable, where Dave as Mitch carelessly handles crying babies and then the babies are in appalling danger. There is often the f-word throughout for forced laughs, and for good measure, nude breasts spurt out as turn-ons. In fact, there is more nudity here than in most of the R-rated party-boy-and-girl comedies in recent years.
This movie won't make you smile or feel good about yourself. It will just make you cringe and hope you get out of this long 105-minute movie.