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 Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston in "The Switch." |
Take away its contentious plot device -- which is either cute or a form of rape, depending on your point of view -- and The Switch adheres almost religiously to the modern-day romantic comedy playbook.
In short order, we meet Kassie (Jennifer Aniston), who's some kind of TV exec, and Wally (Jason Bateman), a financial analyst. He's neurotic and funny, his jokes make her laugh like music. Clearly they belong together, but are just good friends.
The long, frustrating arc of them getting to where the audience knows they're inevitably headed is known as "the movie."
There's the heroine's obligatory ditzy best girlfriend (Juliette Lewis), and the hero's cynical best buddy (Jeff Goldblum, whose lack of interest in a role can be directly measured by how much he sounds like someone doing an impression of Jeff Goldblum).
And of course, there's the "wrong guy" she thinks is Mr. Right (or Mr. Right Enough).
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And then there's "the switch." As is jauntily revealed in the trailers, Kassie decides, after too many failed relationships, that enough is enough and she is going to have a baby by artificial insemination. She even has a party where her friends get to meet the carefully selected donor Roland (Patrick Wilson), and a bereft Wally gets blind drunk. Using the washroom where Roland has left his gift, he accidentally spills the container, and in a barely conscious manoeuvre, "fixes" things by procuring a replacement sample (using a magazine cover picture of Diane Sawyer for inspiration).
Don't worry. All of this is depicted in a drunken haze, represented by petroleum jelly on the lens (at least I hope it was petroleum jelly).
Flash ahead six years. Kassie, who'd gone home to Minnesota to have her baby, comes back with a hyper-sensitive and serious young boy named Sebastian (Thomas Robinson). Now considering a romantic relationship with the athletic Roland, whom she believes to be the father of her child, Kassie is astonished at the instant rapport her usually unsociable child has with Wally.
It's worth noting at this point that in real life, a good number of people, most of them doctors, have gone to jail for fraudulently inseminating women.
But I digress. Any movie with more than one director on the set from the start of shooting is likely to have had more than one game plan. And seriously, the challenge of getting a woman in a light-hearted comedy to go from the revelation of what would be the most profound betrayal in her life to L-O-V-E would drive most scriptwriters to drink. Let's just say I didn't buy what they came up with, whatever they were drinking.
Which is not to say that The Switch is entirely unredeemable. The one big surprise is the smooth-flowing onscreen relationship between Bateman and Robinson as the initially unsuspecting biological father and son. Their exchanges are funny and natural. Example: Wally tells Sebastian the kid may be a hypochondriac. Asked what it is, he says, "It's when you think you have diseases you don't have." "I have that!" Sebastian says.
They are so convincing and comfortable with each other, you are tempted to forgive Wally for having done the unforgivable.
(This film is rated PG-13)
jim.slotek@sunmedia.ca