The Change-Up (2011)
Directed by David Dobkin
Lifelong friends Dave and Mitch are envious of the other's life. Mitch thinks Dave has it all: a beautiful, loving family and a high-paying job at a prestigious law firm. But Dave thinks Mitch’s stress-free playboy life without obligation or consequence is the real dream come true. One fateful drunken night, they both admit that they wish they had the other’s life while peeing in a fountain when lightning strikes. The next morning, they wake up, hungover, in each other’s bodies! With time not on their side, Mitch and Dave comically struggle to avoid completely destroying each other’s lives before they can find a way to get their old ones back.
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What critics compared The Change-Up to
There have been some good ones ("All of Me," "Switch," "Face/Off," "Freaky Friday"), but they're few and far between and "The Change-Up" is one of the worst.
But Bateman and Reynolds never get into the hall-of-mirrors mimicry that Nicolas Cage and John Travolta so enjoyed in “Face/Off.”
As for the acting, no one will confuse what Bateman and Reynolds do as similar to how Nicolas Cage and John Travolta handled a like-minded situation in John Woo’s underrated actioner, Face/Off.
(It’s the one aspect that the similarly themes and far superior “Face/Off,” with Nicolas Cage and John Travolta switching identities, disregarded).
It's always fun to see good actors ape each other (think Face/Off) and a particular joy to see Bateman get to cut loose.
Director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) and screenwriting team Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (The Hangover, The Hangover Part II) have had great commercial success with hard-R material in the past, but the team overswings with its visual gags here, with baby poo spewed like a dare and titty shots that assume too much viewer nostalgia for Porky's.
Remember David Dobkin 's " Wedding Crashers ," during which Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn (sorta) grew out of their hilarious bad-boy bromance so they could settle into domesticity -- with the opposite sex?
Directed by David Dobkin ("Wedding Crashers") and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore ("The Hangover"), "The Change-Up" is a hard R-rated comedy that benefits from Bateman's and Reynolds' genuinely funny and completely over-the-top performances.
The writers of The Hangover and the director of Wedding Crashers know that you’ve seen just as many body-switching comedies from the ’80s as they have, but the way they figure it, you’ve not yet seen a raunchy one.
Ryan Reynolds ("Green Lantern" and "The Proposal") and Jason Bateman ("Horrible Bosses" and "The Switch") swap bodies in this comedy from the director of "Wedding Crashers" and the screenwriters of "The Hangover."
The way director David Dobkin ("Wedding Crashers") has allowed women to be portrayed here is base to say the least, with even Jamie exhibiting bathroom behavior no woman with an ounce of femininity ever would.
When you think about it, it’s a little bit strange there’s an entire genre of body-switching movies, from the “Freaky Friday” iterations to “18 Again!” to “All of Me” to “The Change-Up” to “Heaven Can Wait” to “Face/Off” to “Dream a Little Dream” and you could even include the likes of “Big” and “13 Going on 30” as a sub-genre in which there’s not technically a body switch per se, but a kid is living inside a grown-up’s body.
Prelude to a Kiss , Dating the Enemy, The Hot Chick , The Change-Up , Vice-Versa .