The Switch

It goes down pretty easy… if you go for this sort of thing.

***Click here for more switch pix***

The H-Bomb: Wally (Jason Bateman) is a neurotic pessimist who always thinks he has some kind of disorder, wears ugly sweaters, and has a tendency to talk too much (not to mention his last name is Mars, for Christ‘s sake). In other words, the guy’s kind of a mess. The fact that he is such a mess has squandered every potential relationship he has ever had. One such old flame, Kassie (Jennifer Aniston), who has now been his best friend for several years, has just dropped a bombshell on him: she wants to have a baby via artificial insemination.

Wally has misgivings about this because, for one thing, he still has feelings for her, and because she’s not asking him to be the donor. Why? Well, basically because he is such a goddamn basket case. So instead, she puts out an ad on Craig’s list (!) and casts hunky college professor Roland (Patrick Wilson) in the role of “The Viking” (that term will make sense when/if you see this movie).

On the advice of her best friend Debbie (Juliette Lewis, playing the ditsy kind of BFF part that‘s required of this kind of movie), Kassie decides to throw a party for the insemination, where Roland will donate his… stuff… right there… on site… just typing that last part made me realize how wrong it really seems.

Anyway, something, I won’t say what for the sake of spoiling how it happens (which is hilarious), goes very, very wrong at the party, and unbeknownst to anyone, the daddy goop gets… switched (hence the title).

After this party, Kassie becomes happily pregnant, and decides to leave New York believing that it’s not a suitable place to raise her offspring. Wally, who got absolutely blasted at this bizarre insemination gathering, has little to no memory of what happened that night, and goes on living his life.

Seven years later, Kassie returns to the Big Apple with her young son, Sebastian (Thomas Robinson), in tow. When we, along with Wally, finally meet Sebastian, we notice a few peculiarities about him… he’s freakishly intelligent for his age, and pessimistic, and neurotic, and blunt, and he has weird hobbies like collecting picture frames, and… he sort of reminds us of… Wally… just a little too much. He even kind of… sort of… looks like Wally. Gee, what could this mean? (Amazingly enough, the characters, for the longest time, seem completely oblivious to all of this.)

In fact, despite a rocky start, when Wally spends time with Sebastian; taking him to the Zoo, picking lice out of his hair, giving him very bad advice on how to handle bullies at school, etc., etc., they actually get along like… father and son.

Wally finally catches on to this, and just as he starts to piece it all together, things are complicated even more when Kassie contacts Roland, the donor, and the two strike up a relationship, and it still takes the characters the full second half of the movie to figure what the audience already knew since the end of the insemination party scene.

The basic beef I have with this movie is that it is predictable as hell and basically follows the typical rom-com formula from beginning, to middle, to end. When the two lead characters are introduced, you basically know who’s going to end up with who and who the baby’s daddy is going to be. It’s essentially that kind of cookie cutter, dime-a-dozen romantic comedy that Hollywood cranks out on a regular basis. It’s one of those where the audience is way ahead of the characters every step of the way, and the big reason for watching is to see how these people on the screen will react when they find out what the audience already knows.

That said, this one is helped out considerably by a marginally above average script that keeps the chuckle inducing one liners rolling at a steady pace, a couple of gross out moments to keep the guys in the audience entertained, and a likable cast that has both good energy and chemistry. These elements admittedly, much to my chagrin, make the film very watchable and somewhat enjoyable for the most part.

The main ingredient for why this thing works as well as it does has got to be the cast. Bateman, who I’ve been noticing more and more over the years, I completely loved as Wally. The guy just has this kind of “everyman” charisma that, even when he’s playing a kind of sour puss, just makes him endearing and amusing. Aniston, an actress whose films are apparently a genre unto themselves, I genuinely liked as Kassie, though I suspect many will say that it’s the same role she’s been playing for years now.

Wilson does well as the affable Roland, but being familiar with his other work (“Watchmen“, “Little Children“, “Hard Candy“), I really do think that he’s too good an actor to be playing third banana in assembly line comedies like this. Jeff Goldblum has a funny turn as Wally’s best friend/colleague who pops up throughout the movie to give our hero the sage-like advice he needs to eventually get the girl. He’s yet another stock character in a movie full of stock characters, but Goldblum adds an extra layer and makes him something more.

But the true stand out in this movie for me was the young Robinson as Sebastian. When it comes to child roles like these, casting is crucial. Sebastian is the pivotal character of the movie, and putting the wrong kid in the role would totally kill it. Fortunately, with Robinson, they hit the nail right on the head. He’s quirky, hilarious, and, most importantly, endearing. He steals this movie and I think he’s got a bright future ahead of him.

Overall, “The Switch” definitely isn’t a game changer in the genre of rom-coms (or in the genre of Jennifer Aniston movies), but it is a perfectly decent date movie, which while it isn’t really my thing, for you couples out there, it’s definitely worth checking out.