The Change-Up is a classic body switch movie about two longtime friends, one a failed actor who never grew up (Reynolds) and the other a married lawyer with 3 kids (Bateman).  After a night of lamenting how much they wish they had each other’s lives they get what they wished for after peeing in a magic fountain.  So they have to live each other’s lives and discover how much they treasure their own in the process.

I have mixed feelings about this movie.  First it really isn’t anything you haven’t seen before.  It is exactly what it sells itself as.  A straight up body switch movie.  The script is nothing special and there’s nothing exceptional or special about any of it.  But I found it to be really funny.

I have to say that all the humor is owed to the performances.  Bateman and Reynolds are both great and do comedy like this well.  Then there’s the female cast which consists of Leslie Mann as Bateman’s character’s wife and Olivia Wilde as the girl Bateman wishes in his wildest fantasies he could be with.  Mann is super incredible and just as funny as the guys.  Wilde has a pretty small part but she’s the perfect fantasy girl.

One of my big problems other than the unoriginality is that neither Bateman nor Reynolds are good at playing each other.  They basically just keep playing themselves when they switch bodies.  You have to actually remind yourself that they are supposed to be playing the other one.  Which is pretty bad.

But the movie is funny.  So unoriginal and nothing special, but funny.