Dir. David Dobkin, USA , 2011, 122 mins
Cast: Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds, Olivia Wilde,
Review by Carol Allen
The “body swap” comedy is almost a sub genre of its own. Some of them work really well – think Freaky Friday , All of Me, Prelude to a Kiss; some of them perhaps less so. The Change Up succeeds in parts. But the idea is always an intriguing one. What would it be like to experience the world through someone else’s body?
The body swap this time is between Dave (Bateman) and Mitch (Reynolds), best friends since childhood, who have drifted apart as their lives have developed along different lines. Dave is a hard working, stressed out lawyer, married with three children; Mitch a carefree, sex obsessed, dope smoking bachelor and occasional actor. On a rare night out on the town together something weird happens and the following morning they wake up in each others bodies and find themselves forced to live each others lives. Inevitably they learn lessons from the experience both about themselves and each other and, when the inevitable transfer back to normality comes about, emerge from the experience better and wiser men.
There are moments of high comedy, as in the opening sequence, when a sleepy Dave is coping with changing his infant twins’ nappies in the middle of the night. Contrast that with the way Mitch later and now in Dave’s body treats the kids with a refreshingly cavalier and comic lack of care and attention. Bateman is a very good actor with excellent comic timing and a sense of pathos and of the two, he is the more convincing. Both the characters are likeable though. For a lot of the time however the film sadly relies on the current trend for gross out humour to get its laughs. It makes you wonder why American films are so obsessed with excreta. Pooh jokes are very funny when you’re a toddler fascinated with your particular achievement in this area, but coming from adults they become merely tedious, tasteless and not very funny. The change over itself depends on one such, when the two friends pee into what turns out to be a magic fountain – fantasy and scatology make strange bedfellows. I also question whether any infant is capable of the sort of projectile skill demonstrated by one of Dave’s twins, while Dave in Mitch’s body having an encounter with a sex mad woman, who is nine months pregnant, is also a bit questionable.
Still the film does have its up sides, one of which is Olivia Wilde, who also made her mark in Cowboys and Aliens recently. She plays the sexy lawyer colleague, whom Dave fancies. It’s basically the “sexy crumpet” role but she manages to make something a bit special out of it. She’s definitely a talent to watch.
