The Change-Up
19th September 2011. Location: Cinema
With an average trailer and an awful title, this looked to be a time-filler movie. Something to watch on a day off, or a Sunday afternoon. But as with another terribly-monikered Jason Bateman vehicle this year, Horrible Bosses, I was pleasantly surprised as I watched it.
Once again, the body-swap plot is almost clockwork, and the mechanics of the grass is always greener lesson are layered on pretty thickly, but this really benefits from having four likeable leads in place to keep it moving along. I love Jason Bateman anyway, and Leslie Mann and Olivia Wilde are dependably great (given the limitations of their characters), but the real surprise was seeing Ryan Reynolds in a role where he's not completely average. It looks like everyone had fun making this, and characters that would typically be brash and unlikeable (Reynolds' Mitch/Dave) still carry enough warmth to make you want a happy ending, not just the 'back to their own bodies' one you know you'll get anyway.
What also makes this stand out from other body-swap comedies is the layer of Hangover humour dusted across the top. Constantly foul-mouthed, but not desperately so; frequently gross-out, but not overdone. It's a nice change for this particular movie, but I can see it creeping in and being standard from hereon-in.
And that's about it, really. A sturdy-yet-safe comedy, plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and a surprising amount of charm. More of a DVD/Sky movie than a must-see at the cinema, but if you're going anyway this week, you could do a lot worse than this.
It gets a 6 purely for being better than the other movies I've seen at the flicks this month. So far, anyway.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
No comments:
Post a Comment