The Change-Up, starring Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds

It doesn't take long before The Change-Up delivers it's first gross out. Um, about a minute into the film, actually, as super stick in the mud Dave Lockwood(Jason Bateman) gets an early morning wake up call by one of his infant children. Yeah, it's a big ol' dirty diaper we're greeted with. What comes next makes me yearn for the hackiness of the baby projectile vomit scene, but let's just say Dave will forever take the phrase "talkin' sh*t" far more seriously.  This is pretty much what you're in store for with The Change-Up, 100 minutes of poo and jokes you'll swear you've heard before.

Body switching movies almost never get out of the starting gate with me, and that's because the core message is always the same. Learn to appreciate your own life rather than coveting others'. I get it. Freaky Friday did it better. So did Vice Versa. Here we're treated to Dave and his irresponsible manchild best friend, Mitch(Ryan Reynolds), who magically switch bodies after pissing in a mischievous fountain.  Mitch must now take on the marital responsbilities of the workaholic Dave, while Dave gets that break he always wanted plus live the life of a bachelor for a few days. Mitch turns Dave into a foul mouthed, neglectful husband to his beautiful wife, Jamie(Leslie Mann) and terrible father to his kids. He's also a pretty terrible lawyer. Dave is too buttoned up and nervous to ever truly take advantage of Mitch's frisky lady friends, although it does give him the opportunity to hang out with his office crush(the omnipresent Olivia Wilde).

The Change-Up was scripted by The Hangover writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. What they apparently learned from that film's massive success is that more poop and fart jokes equals success, because there isn't much else going on. The life swapping idea isn't explored in any meaningful way, nor are the difficulties of marriage between Dave and Jamie. It's meant to be shocking, the cruel way Dave treats his family, but I'm at a loss to figure out how it's supposed to be funny. Mitch, in Dave's body of course, is perfectly willing to bang his best friend's wife. Why are these two friends again? It's completely unbelievable to the point of taking me totally out of the story. The only reason it's worth watching at all is because Bateman gets a chance to finally play a different character, rather than a variation of Michael Bluth he's been perfecting for years. The only time Reynolds was able to play anybody other than the knucklehead he always does was when he was trapped in a box. All of the women in this movie are presented as dopes. Period.

David Dobkin(Wedding Crashers) directed, but I don't blame him for this mess. Body swapping movies arent going to go away, as much as I'd like them to. Let's just hope the next one tries a little harder than The Change-Up does.