Rated R (Pervasive Strong Crude Sexual Content and Language, Some Graphic Nudity and Drug Use)
Starring Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde, and Alan Arkin
THIS IS A 2011 MOVIE. ON DVD NOW.
Good God. ANOTHER movie about two completely opposite people switching bodies? Last summer I had a boring 2 day internship and a tiny job cleaning tennis courts. So, I went to the movies a lot. Positively every time I went to the movies they always showed a trailer of The Change-Up (I even think when I saw the G-rated Cars 2 they had a trailer for it). From the first time I saw the trailer to the last time I saw the trailer I always said to myself: I AM NOT GONNA PAY TO SEE THIS. Why? Because this formula has been done to death. Big. Freaky Friday. 13 Going on 30. The Hot Chick. 17 Again. The Change-Up basically says "Yeah it's been done to death but not in a super dirty movie! So let's do it!"
Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman are Mitch and Dave, the two completely opposite characters that switch bodies (of course they have to be different, or else the movie would be super boring). Mitch is a pot-loving, foul-mouthed ladies' man who has lots of sex and loves to use the F-word for no reason. Dave is a workaholic father of 3 who never gets to have fun really. They're both friends, and after peeing in a "magical" fountain (which isn't explained at all in the movie) and saying "I wish I had your life" at the same time then BOOM. We have a formula that's utterly predictable by the end. Obviously Mitch and Dave are gonna start to like their lives in different bodies and then by the end they're gonna change as people and then go back to their old bodies. Boringggggggggggggg. Why can't some ingenuous screenwriter use this formula but make it different in a way? My idea is that it's really hard to do that.
It's fun to watch Reynolds and Bateman switch personalities and the movie does have some predictable yet sweet moments. In one scene, Jamie (Leslie Mann), Dave's wife, cries to Mitch (who's really Dave) and says that she's worried that there's something wrong with her husband because he's acting like a total douchebag. I could have easily fallen for this formula, but The Change-Up just isn't funny. And this is written by the writers of The Hangover? What?! Oh yeah, and this is directed by David Dobkin, who did one of the funniest movies ever, Wedding Crashes. WHAT?!?! Where are the jokes and laugh-out-loud moments? Worst of all the lengths that The Change-Up goes to be dirty and raunchy and irreverent. It's all forced and not naturally executed in the film. We see lots of boobs (including prosthetic ones from Leslie Mann, husband of Judd Apatow and the star in each of his films) that are gratuitous for no reason. In the first scene of the movie we see a baby's anus open up and fart and then shoot out diarrhea poop into Jason Bateman's mouth. Oh yeah, and in another scene Olivia Wilde gets her vagina tattooed. Like really? Seriously? This isn't even gross funny. This is just gross for no reason.
I know that The Hangover was nasty and dirty but it had a point to be because its story is about 4 friends who don't remember what happened the night before IN LAS VEGAS, that crazy city where crazy stuff can happen. But The Change-Up? This raunchiness is so unnecessarily forced it's almost obnoxious to watch.
