Plot: When New York City transplant Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) realizes that she wants to have a baby, she decides to conceive through artificial insemination. Despite the objections of her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) Kassie goes through with the procedure. However, during the insemination party Wally (who secretly loves Kassie) switches donor Roland's (Patrick Wilson) semen with his. After moving to Minnesota, Kassie returns seven years later to New York City with son Sebastian who demonstrates surprising similarities to Wally. As Wally develops a relationship with Sebastian, can he find the courage to open himself up enough and reveal his secret love to Kassie?
Review: If The Switch sounds like a ridiculous idea for a movie you are absolutely right. Contrived, overly sentimental, and boasting a trite script that follows the formula of typical romantic comedies, The Switch is a movie that make Little Fockers look like Animal House by comparison.
The Switch is a terrible movie on multiple levels. There wasn't one character I cared about in this entire film. Wally's neurosis aren't charming or funny they are annoying. Attribute that mostly to Jason Bateman who for the life of me I can't understand why he still has a career. His acting in this film is on par with a seventh grade production of Annie Get Your Gun. Kassie comes across as boring and uninteresting not only because screenwriter Allan Loeb couldn't provide personality to the character, but because Jennifer Aniston's acting has declined faster than Charlie Sheen's social relevance. Seriously, Aniston has not made a good movie since 2002's The Good Girl and since then there have been nothing but a parade of craptacular romantic comedies. Even Jeff Goldblum's cameo as Wally's boss Leonard stinks out loud. David Duchovny's imitation of Jeff Goldblum would have been a better performance than Jeff Goldblum. And funnier to boot.
The Switch suffers from the fact that it is an ill conceived plot. I find it incredibly sad that people out there actually have "insemination parties." They are probably about as painful to go to as the scene from The Switch. I don't know what's more disturbing, that Jason Bateman played around with the donor's semen in the bathroom while drunk, that he had to replace it with his semen by pleasuring himself to a magazine featuring Diane Sawyer, or that he was too drunk to remember any of it until seven years later. I'm leaning towards all three.
Even the relationship between Sebastian and Wally is asinine. Wally's advice to Sebastian about a school bully? Act crazy. Wow. Thanks Dad. What's your advice on safe driving? Always pound a bottle of Jack Daniels before you get behind the wheel?
What's even more insulting is that The Switch desperately thinks it's saying something meaningful about relationships. The scene where Wally reveals his love to Kassie is tragic and not in a good way. Overly sappy and replete with tears and professions of love, and accompanied by composer Alex Wurman's sentimental music, I found myself wishing that my television was in 3D so I could slap Bateman and Aniston across the face. Even worse was Wally's final voiceover that shows people rushing through the streets where he says, "Maybe it's not the world that's in fast forward, maybe it's the people." WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN???
The only thing The Switch inspired me to do was change places with someone on death row.
My rating: 1/10
The last thing I would think of as sexy is charcoal, lighter fluid and burnt arm hair, but that made the joke all the better. The ending with Sebastian’s Birthday party was a great way to tie things up. The fact that Sebastian decided to help the homeless dogs was wonderful. The cake looked like a rock climbing wall too which was a great subliminal joke. As much as the movies are these days I would rather rent a movie from dishonline.com rather than see them in the theater. I save so much money that we can do some other things besides stay at home like our favorite, miniature golf. I found this movie when I was browsing on my employee DISH account but there are thousands of movies to choose from.
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