The Change-Up (2011)

I don't get gross-out comedy. I certainly understand why it exists, but I don't think it serves any real purpose in the modern film world. It made more sense back in the seventies when people like John Waters were still experimenting with the boundaries of cinema, with the help of the still-new ratings system. However, in the past forty years, just about every grotesque gag that can be imagined has been thrown on the screen. So, the only people that will probably be grossed out, or even amused, will be young teenagers who aren't even the target audience, at least not directly. That's why we film snobs call these things immature, because they become irrelevant at the point of real maturity. Take the scene in The Change-Up in which a baby graphically defecates into the mouth of Jason Bateman. Am I supposed to laugh? Am I supposed to recoil in disgust? I didn't do either, but I was still rather annoyed, more at the theater full of people cracking up than at the movie for having the joke in the first place.

The plot has been done more times than any reasonable person would care to recall. It is the ol' switcher-oo. Jason Bateman is the lawyer and family man with more responsibilities than he wants to deal with. Ryan Reynolds is the high school drop-out who can't keep a steady job and is having issues with his dad. They then do the magic movie trick of saying at the same time they want to switch places with each other, which, of course, works. What follows is over an hour of "hilarity" at the expense of each not fitting into the other's life and then realizing how awesome they both are and learning their lesson and switching back. It's all far too touching. Did I mention that part of the switching ceremony involves pissing into a "magic fountain?" Yeah. And when they switch back, they have to do it again in front of a large crowd of people including a group of delighted girl scouts. This is not funny.

My principal problem with this movie is that it doesn't try to do anything remotely different with this genre which is as old as film itself. Plus, all of the humor revolves around the idea that the mere mention of strong profanity or a lewd anatomical reference is automatically funny. So, we're back to the maturity issue. Grown adults shouldn't think it is so hilarious when someone just uses an obscenity, which, by itself, is not funny. The same thing goes for the oft-repeated gag about one of the guy's feeling like he has a third testicle. Ha ha ha. And it's brought up right at what I can only assume was supposed to be an emotional moment. Here again I say, genitals themselves are not funny. Beyond those two things, which do make up the bulk of the humor, there are also extensive scenes involving babies being in potentially harmful situations, which I guess are supposed to have some sort of shock value, but when you've seen Roger Rabbit do it better, it's a little beyond that.

I just simply am not a fan of this type of movie or its brand of humor and I did not think this was one bit funny. In addition, I think the movie as a movie was poorly thrown together and I did not feel that Bateman and Reynolds were at all convincing playing each other. Perhaps, if the movie had focused on the actual bizarre situation and built some gags off of that, it could have been better. Then again, it probably wouldn't have been.

4/10