The Change-Up- Movie Review

Directed by David Dobkin
Written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
Running Time: 112 minutes (1h, 52 mins.)
Rated R (for pervasive strong crude sexual content and language, some graphic nudity and drug use)
Distributor: Universal Pictures

Does this film really need to summerized? It's pretty simple. Two people. Best friends since 3rd grade. One's a married lawyer with three children. The other's a ladies' man with an acting gig. They decide to see each other after so long. They get drunk. They covet each other's lives. They pee in a magic fountain. They wish they had each other's lives. They wake up the morning and find themeselves in each other's bodies. That's right. It's another body-switching comedy. Woop-dee-freaking-do.

It's a story that's been done for decades and there's been at least 30 of them. I think. Most are good, some are great, others just suck. This one is just average. I'll explain later. Right now, I should mention that Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds play the two friends, Dave and Mitch. When we meet them in the beginning, it offers reasons why they envy each other's lives, somthing I didn't quite get in the trailers and advertisements. To have a baby to crap in your mouth pretty much says your life kinda sucks (This happens right in the begnning of the film), but then again, you're getting paid big time. And banging a woman who's nine months pregnant is weird too. Then again, she is hot. I should think about those two. Anyway, back to the movie. Mitch is the kind of person that you can't believe Dave is friends with. He's an obnoxious person who will hit on anyone, smokes weed from a bong and swears in front of little children. Basically, when he's in Dave's body, he's not exactly father material. As for Dave (in Mitch's body), he hasn't had sex with anyone other than his wife and feels that if he does, it's considered cheating. Of course later in the film, Dave (in Mitch's body) gets set up with his ridiculously hot secretary, played by Olivia Wilde, and he doesn't know what to do. Dave's wife is played by Leslie Mann, who reserrects the unsatisfied, bored stay-at-home mom she once played in Knocked Up. She's great in this movie, but some of her performance has somehting to do with the movie, some of it doesn't.

Same thing with the gross-out jokes and dirty-minded humor. Some get laughs (and lots of it) and some are just desperate attempts to get laughs. I'm surprised by this becuase this was written by the writers of The Hangover (the original film, not the sequel). It was also directed by David Dobkin, who brought us films like Wedding Crashers and Clay Pigeons. Judging by that, this could have been a lot more funnier, especially when Reynolds and Bateman are absolutely great playing opposites of each other. In fact, they're the best buddy duo I've seen this year so far.

Let me conclude this review by saying that this is not a bad movie (as most critics are suggesting), but in a summer filled with a lot of good R-rated comedies, this is probably the weakest of the bunch, so my rating for this film is **1/2.