Crazy ChangeBy John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
In The Change-Up, Ryan Reynolds (Mitch) and Jason Bateman (Dave) are best friends who change bodies. Yes, you saw the same conceit in other comedies such as Freaky Friday, Vice Versa, and Like Father Like Son, but changing one's life into another's still plays well because so many of us at one time or another have wanted to make that change, usually for some movie star or tycoon.
This film has an understated comedic take by Bateman, who, like Steve Carell in Crazy Stupid Love, carries the story through improbable to believable. By the way, both films explore the approaching mid-lifer's need to be other than he is. Interestingly enough, in The Change-Up Reynolds as the handsome slacker is paralleled by Ryan Gosling in Crazy as a handsome slacker.
You might guess living another life is not quite as enviable as it sounds with diapers to change on Dave's side and strange women on Mitch's. As it was in Crazy, the married man has the most to lose, and the film hangs its moral center on that premise.
While I am always put off by reliance on the scatological, and The Change-Up relies on too many setups like that, such as babies shooting poop and a beautiful woman on a commode, the rest of the film relies on swift banter in the spirit of the screwball comedy and some character development among the principals that respects the difference among adults in their professional and personal lives.
Although The Change-Up is sillier than Crazy, they both challenge the notion that life on the other side of marriage is happy. While the former has far raunchier scenes, they both take a serious subject-the survival of marriage, and laugh to agreeable endings that should make the current conservative craze feel in control of our destiny.
Crazy, stupid change may promise sane, smart love.