The Switch

This Is It?

I've seen films where urine samples got swapped, substituted or diluted, but unless it's an American Pie related teenage comedy flick, I haven't seen one that does the same with semen. Yes folks, The Switch has this plot element early on so as to set up a comedy of errors and to live up to one's mistake performed many years back. Jason Bateman, in what I think is his high-profile leading role in a romantic comedy, gives the performance of his career as the neurotic Wally Mars, whose best friend Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is deciding to have a baby through artificial insemination, and as a buyer, she's out there in the market to look for superior seed stock.

True that it comes with a tinge of regret and jealousy, but eventually that donor is found (the ever smiling Patrick Wilson as Roland), only for a drunk Wally to flush down the contents and to replace the stock with his own. Cue 6 years later, and with Kassie back in town with her kid Sebastian (Thomas Robinson), Wally begins to see obvious signs that Sebastian could actually be his kid, and from the romantic angle, Roland serves up as keen competition to Wally as the latter hesitates to tell Kassie the truth.

While the film boasts some seldom seen veterans these days such as Jeff Goldblum and a visibly aged Juliette Lewis, the star of the show is undoubtedly Thomas Robinson as the kid out to charm your heart so effortlessly with his neuroticism, and that penchant for collecting photo frames. He's performance and demeanour is quite uncanny to Bateman's Wally, and that underscores his fine, nuanced mimicry of a character to make it believable that he could be just that kid with the same DNA.

The story doesn't throw up any surprises nor is it an outright comedy from start to finish, but it has enough wit and charm in its narrative and coupled with some memorable performances by both Bateman and Robinson (Aniston was playing her character like any other she's portrayed before), The Switch becomes a delight to watch and makes you wonder whether such accidents in real life could happen, but of course that will almost be a crisis to deal with rather than to be comical at all.

You can read my review of The Switch at movieXclusive.com by clicking on the logo below.