THE CHANGE-UP

It’s weirdly appropriate that a movie featuring two vastly different guys switching bodies also has something of its own split-personality problem.

Because The Change-Up can’t seem to decide whether it wants to be a supremely raunchy crassfest or a strangely sweet buddy comedy about characters learning to lead better lives by (literally) stepping into someone else’s shoes.

Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman co-star as, respectively, lifelong pals Mitch and Dave. Mitch is weed-smoking, womanizing slacker and wannabe actor, who dabbles in “lorno” (light porno); Dave is an attorney with a beautiful wife (Leslie Mann) and three precocious kids, and is as strait-laced as they come. Each looks at the other’s life and longs for a taste of what the other has. Thankfully, their wish is granted when they pee in a magical fountain after a drunken night out, and wake up in each other’s bodies.

For the first half of The Change-Up, it feels as though director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) is trying really, really hard to push the envelope of good taste. His characters swear up a storm, to the point that it becomes distracting and a big, red flag of lazy screenwriting. Nevermind the number of poop jokes that splatter across the screen, not the least of which involves Dave getting a mouthful of… nevermind. You get the idea. I sat in my seat and groaned internally.

However.

The film also follows a textbook narrative arc, which means the fellas will initially screw up as they attempt to blend into completely foreign environments… and then enlightenment will inevitably arrive. And, thankfully, that happens somewhere around the middle of the film. Coincidentally, that was also right around the time I started to enjoy it (and, ironically, when my movie-going pal started hating it).

Once Dave and Mitch begin getting their respective acts together, the crude humor suddenly evaporates and the movie gives itself over to a much more subdued, funny-but-sweet tone. The f-bomb quotient drops significantly, and there’s nary a skidmark to be seen. More importantly, once the actors dial down the manic mayhem a bit, they allow themselves to, you know, act. Leslie Mann has a particularly effective and unexpectedly moving scene where she tearfully explains the disappointments in her marriage, and I kept thinking, “Good grief! THIS is the movie they should have been making all along!” I like schmaltz, and I’m not ashamed to say I wanted more of it in this movie.

Both Reynolds and Bateman are likeable men and have excellent comic timing that, here, is nicely underscored by quietly dramatic interludes later on, and even Olivia Wilde – in the token “hot girl” role – proves charming. They’re all people you want to watch onscreen, and whom you hope win out in the end. It’s just too bad audiences will have to wade through more than 40 minutes of stupid, gross-out “jokes” before The Change-Up switches gears and morphs into something entirely different.

And not entirely terrible.