The Change-Up

It’s ‘Freaky Friday’ with F-words and boobies as this body-swap comedy goes grown-up in search of laughs. Jason Bateman is the serious one (married, kiddies, lawyer, stressed), Ryan Reynolds the dude (single, womanising, jobbing actor, unfulfilled), and courtesy of a magic fountain from the ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ school of ironically dumb plot devices, each gets to experience the other’s life. The film’s moralising agenda is swiftly apparent, and pretty one-sided it is too, since Bateman’s return to the bachelor lifestyle has him longing for hearth and home, while Reynolds’s preview of adulthood proves a wake-up call to embrace responsibility. All thuddingly obvious – though, to be fair, sundry outrageous comedy moments keep it lively enough in the meantime, even if the spraying poo and porn-actress gags are more effortful than a spirited sequence where laidback Reynolds tackles childcare. Thanks to a likeable Bateman and a sterling Leslie Mann as his long-suffering/devoted missus, it plays – though you’d have to call the whole undertaking workmanlike rather than inspired.