A brainless Freaky Friday. Wait, rephrase- an even MORE brainless Freaky Friday.
We all knew this film would be dumb. I mean, the two leads said themselves this is a dumb, unoriginal idea. But the cast and crew of The Change-Up must have thought they were sitting on a comedy goldmine of a script to have the courage to make this film. Turns out they didn't. But it's not all bad.
The Change-Up is about two old friends, Mitch (Ryan Reynolds) and Dave (Jason Bateman) who are completely different. Mitch is a frat-tastic, dummy who can't get a real acting job so he settles for some soft-core porn (more on that later). Dave is a family man with a VERY impressive lawyer job. All Mitch wants is to keep his slacker/ladies man life and all Dave wants... is Mitch's slacker/ladies man life. After a drunken turn of events, they switch bodies and, well, the rest is obvious.
Best thing about the film: watching Jason Bateman FINALLY play completely against type as the obnoxious, almost misogynistic Mitch. Ryan Reynolds is also great at being both aggressively awful and awkwardly charming in his two different personas.
Not only does this movie suffer from a tired plot, the comedy is trying too hard to be raunchy. And instead of coming up with a new Hangover or Wedding Crashers, the audience gets a script full of dirty jokes that serve no real purpose. On top of that, there are so many body-switching cliches and the female roles are not well-written. But I will say that there were a few parts that were genuinely humorous- Most of those moments came from Jason Bateman's all-or-nothing performance.
With all the wrong that was going on, it was hard to see the right but for the most part, the film flowed and was a quick watch. Even though the story was dull and the twists were obvious, it didn't falter on pace. And when you're watching a fairly bad movie, that's the best thing you can hope for.
Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds deserve a much better vehicle with which to star in together. They're both fine actors who have more comedy genius than most people combined. But their talent is wasted here with the unoriginal script, twists, and jokes.
C
With all the wrong that was going on, it was hard to see the right but for the most part, the film flowed and was a quick watch. Even though the story was dull and the twists were obvious, it didn't falter on pace. And when you're watching a fairly bad movie, that's the best thing you can hope for.
Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds deserve a much better vehicle with which to star in together. They're both fine actors who have more comedy genius than most people combined. But their talent is wasted here with the unoriginal script, twists, and jokes.
C
No comments:
Post a Comment