The Change-Up Is a Dish Best Served Streaming

The only selling point for The Change-Up for me was Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds being in the same movie. What else was needed?  I have seen Freaky Friday – both the Jodie Foster and Lindsay Lohan versions – a million times, and the “I wish I had your life switch” is by no means new or original. However, I just had to see Bateman and Reynolds on screen together, and as far as that goes, I wasn’t disappointed.  Overall, though, The Change-Up left me feeling neutral towards it.

I was raised in Georgia just outside of Atlanta (this point seems random, but I promise you, it’s relevant). It took me until they were spelling out where they were near the end of the second act of the movie to figure out that The Change-Up is set in Atlanta. They may have thought that this was given away earlier with a scene set at Ecco, which is a restaurant in Atlanta – but it’s also a nightclub in Hollywood. In fact, up until the Georgia Department of Parks sent them to the Peachtree Mall and the next scene had tickets to a Braves game, I thought it was just some random, unnamed movie-land city. Atlanta as the setting had no bearing on the story, so it never needed to be brought up at all, and especially not that aggressively. In fact, if it was so important to get the point across that “this is Atlanta,” a few more street signs with “Peachtree” on them would be nice. I haven’t lived in Georgia for a long time, and the last time I’ve been to Atlanta was two years ago, but the one thing I always remember is that there are an insane amount of streets there named “Peachtree.” A shot of one of the freeway signs might have been nice, too. Maybe mentioning the Atlanta Braves earlier in the film – Dave and Mitch did meet up in the movie to watch a game, but they never specified what game – could also have worked in the information sooner. The fact that I couldn’t recognize my own hometown until it was hammered over my head threw me out of the movie, and it was very hard to get back into.

Besides featuring an overused plot and making me wondering if my parents really did raise me in Georgia, The Change-Up had a lot of set-up with no pay-off. Mitch had a relationship with Dave’s kids, for example, and the way he interacted with them made me think that was going to be the way it was finally revealed that the two had switched bodies. Apparently, Mitch not even being able to pronounce Dave’s daughter’s name was not going to tip anyone off that strange things are happening. It made me wonder about what kind of people were living in this universe. Since when does a rough patch in a marriage mean your husband stops being able to pronounce your daughter’s name? Dave’s wife Jamie wasn’t even be tipped off by the fact that Mitch has obviously never held a baby in his life and in Dave’s body just has no clue about what he’s supposed to do with the twins. Jamie has her classic movie wife moment where she blames relationship problems on her husband, but I’m sorry, if you can’t tell that your husband is very clearly not your husband, can all the problems in a marriage really be his fault? Somewhere along the way, Jamie clearly stopped paying attention, too, and that’s never addressed.

However, the whole reason I wanted to see the movie was because I wanted to see Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds in a movie together, and that was not disappointing. The two had great chemistry together, and it was a little bit nice seeing Jason Bateman get to be a Ryan Reynolds-type character, and Ryan Reynolds being a Jason Bateman-type character. I got to see them break away from the mold that I learned to love them in, while at the same time having that safety that they would act like themselves again and all would be good with the world. Anytime Mitch and Dave interacted with each other was golden, but my favorite scene is when Mitch was trying to be a good dad to Cara and tells her violence solves every problem. This only got funnier when Cara flips a girl during a dance recital. Mitch was a bad dad with good intentions, and it was pretty funny.

However, for the most part, there is nothing stand-out amazing about The Change-Up. I enjoyed it, and I would watch it again, but it’s definitely a movie you wait to rent. It’s not really worth the $10 price of admission, no matter how entertaining it is. Bateman and Reynolds deliver, but the movie itself just can’t hold up to the many body-switch movies already out there.