The Change Up (2011)

Directed by: David Dobkin | 112 minutes | comedy | Actors: Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, Leslie Mann, Olivia Wilde, Alan Arkin, Mircea Monroe, Gregory Itzin, Ned Schmidtke, Ming Lo, Sydney Rouviere, Dax Griffin, Andrea Moore, Matt Cornwell, Craig Bierko, Taaffe O’Connell

There must be countless married men walking around who would like to return to the debauchery of the single life. Just as there are many singles on this planet who yearn for a woman to wait for them every night, or even children who come running down the stairs cheering because Dad comes home from work. But what if they actually get what they want? With that in mind, the screenwriter duo Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (known for hits like ‘The Hangover’ and ‘The Hangover Part II’ and lesser successes like ‘Flypaper’ and ‘Ghosts of Girlfriends Past’) wrote the story of ‘The Change Up’. ‘The Change-Up’ is about two childhood friends, Dave Lockwood (Jason Bateman) and Mitch Planko (Ryan Reynolds). Dave is married, has three children and a responsible life as a lawyer about to become a partner in his firm. Mitch is a smoking, unemployed actor, who can get a woman on every finger (and eagerly uses it). After a night out, the two are urinating in a magic fountain. At the same time, they express the wish that they would like to have each other’s lives. Lightning strikes and the next day Dave wakes up as Mitch and Mitch as Dave.

The mistaken identity principle has already been exploited to the bone in Hollywood. Tom Hanks played an adult version of his younger self in ‘Big’ (1988), Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan played mother and daughter switching bodies in ‘Freaky Friday’ (which was also a remake of the 1976 version , in which Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster played the roles of mother and daughter), Jennifer Garner was an adolescent girl in an adult body in ’13 Going on 30′ and in the similar ’17 Again’ the thirty-something Matthew Perry as adolescent Zac Efron got a second chance. The basis remains the same in ‘The Change Up’, but nevertheless this film manages to entertain for the most part. This has a lot to do with the protagonists, who can count on the sympathy of the viewer in the precarious situations in which they find themselves. It’s a shame that for every successful joke there is a completely misplaced scene, as if the creators accidentally used both the approved and rejected jokes folder. For example, who can laugh at a baby who hurts himself by banging his head rhythmically against the bars of his crib (especially when it’s performed as inconclusively as here)? The makers could also have stepped on the brakes a little harder when using the vulgar jokes.

What does help in the success of ‘The Change-Up’ is that the two protagonists, Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds, seem perfectly capable of taking over the character traits of their opponents. Leslie Mann is also a valuable addition to the cast as Jamie, Dave’s wife. Jamie is eager to resolve her marital problems, but is denied by Dave, who is basically just working all the time. You will see that the switch manages to give that a positive spin. Olivia Wilde can be seen as Dave’s sexy co-worker (whom Dave secretly has a crush on) and although she mainly functions as eye candy, she has a nice chemistry with both Bateman and Reynolds. Do not expect a surprising film, because every line is completed as you suspect. But for a relaxing hour and a half ‘The Change-Up’ is a great choice.