Jan 31, 2013
In "The Change-Up," lifelong buddies Mitch Planko(Ryan Reynolds) and Dave Lockwood(Jason Bateman) rarely get to hang out these days what with Dave's burgeoning legal career and having three kids with his wife Jamie(Leslie Mann) and Mitch's stalled acting career in Atlanta. Well, at least Mitch got invited to his father's(Alan Arkin) latest wedding. So, Mitch and Dave hanging out together to watch a baseball game at a bar is a big deal, so much so that Dave stands his wife up. Later, the guys, needing to urinate very badly, choose a fountain where instead of wishing for the second coming of Greg Maddux, like every other self-respecting Braves fan would, they wish they could have each other's lives. The good news is that the fountain statue does not blink them back to the past. The bad news is that they wake up in each other's bodies which is complicated by Dave's upcoming big case and Mitch's role in a movie. "The Change-Up" takes an old idea and does little with it except for sprucing it up with some vulgarity. However, the crude material does not matter as much as the clumsiness with which it is presented once the plot kicks in. Strangely enough, the movie eventually goes from there to mawkish sentimentality. And Jason Bateman again proves how much a one note actor he is. That leaves the door open for Olivia Wilde to steal scenes wholesale while we otherwise count the seconds waiting for Alan Arkin to show up again. Overall, the movie is exaggerated to poor effect, as it is hard to imagine anybody acting like Mitch in real life, for example. Look, I have friends who are married with kids like my brother and we respect each other's life choices. But I don't envy them and they do not envy my encyclopedic knowledge of Lithuanian cinema, even as we occasionally try to see a grown-up movie together.
