MOVIE REVIEW - The Change Up

Whoa! There's bad, and then there's The Change Up.

Somehow I made it all the way through this two hour supposed comedy about a supernatural switching of lives. One body taking over the life and body of another, and visa-versa. This mess stars Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman, both who have done really good work in the past. But it'll take a while to clean up this mess.

Briefly, it's the story of Dave (Bateman), a married man with three kids and a great wife. He has a lifelong friend, Mitch (Reynolds). Due to a drunken night out they somehow get their lives switched. Dave is now Mitch and Mitch is now Dave. Mitch is a dope smoking, irresponsible dude that has never grown up. Dave is a respected lawyer up for promotion at work. As you can see, the opposite inhabiting each others lives is a recipe for disaster. This is supposed to be funny. All that idea is is old and tired.

That's as deep as this gets. The first hour of this movie tries so hard to out do itself for gross, and vile scenes on screen. It is hard do fathom the minds that think that much of this is funny. Every single frame of the early portion is horrible. It almost seemed as though this was made up as it went along. "Here. let's try this, this is is REALLY gross." The word tasteless pops into mind throughout too. This movie is totally tasteless in every regard. Buyer beware, this movie is packaged so differently than what it delivers. It is rated R, and that's fine. But an R rating doesn't get it off the hook. Tasteless and foul is tasteless and foul, no matter what letter is up front.

The second half of this movie tries real hard to grow a heart, switch gears and actually become a movie. It tries to shed the horrible suit of armor it was wearing the first hour, but it's too late and too far gone. It tries to tell a story and make you feel. And to be fair it does get better, but it has no where to go but to get better. But it still stinks - bad! It's also the movie that never ends. 30 minutes too.

There are a lot of good people in this movie, including the talented Alan Sorkin and the lovely Olivia Wilde. But even they can't make this palatable. This movie is an example of seeing how far these new movie making dudes can push us to get young boys to laugh. Aside from the money, I'm sure the writer, producer and directors moms, and families are so very proud of their sons creative visions and really vile sense of what is funny and entertaining.

The Change Up. This could be the worst movie of the year, or any year.