Movie Review: The Change-Up

           I probably wouldn’t pay any more hard-earned cash-money to rewatch The Change-Up, staring Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds. I also probably wouldn’t On-Demand or Netflix or Red Box it. However, I would be willing to rewatch it if it happened upon the old boob-tube and/or if someone I were friends with really, really wanted to see it. The Change-Up was... pretty funny. It’s no Bridesmaids. It’s no Hangover. It’s no Forgetting Sarah Marshall. It’s pretty funny with a pretty good message: single-guys in your thirties, get your sh*t together; married-guys with jobs and kids, don’t forget to go roller-blading and read fiction (or whatever it is you’ve stopped doing for yourself over the years in the name of your commitments to other people).

My big problem with The Change-Up is that its message brought up but only very lightly touched upon the issue of what they call the “cancer list,” i.e., the three women any guy in a committed relationship would want to date/sleep-with were his partner to die of cancer (bad, I know). The reason I say “only touched on...” and why this a big problem for yours truly is because (1) it really is a problem (i.e., men will always have a “cancer list”), and (2) I don’t think there’s any way for Jason Bateman’s committed-guy to actually scratch the itch in question without betraying his wife and kids and, well, life, whereas it’s totally easy and possible for him to do that self-stuff like go roller-blading and read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom.

All this is to say: I wish The Change-Up had grown its own third-nut (Jason Bateman's character has a third-nut, supposedly) and done a little bit more than it did to address the issue of the “cancer list.” I also wish that it were a little funnier.

p.s. Yet another movie starring Olivia "I'm in way, way too many movies right now" Wilde, this time more charming/sexy than she was in Cowboys & Aliens but with a pretty bad wig (as pointed out by my girlfriend, with whom I somehow avoided talking about the "cancer list" after seeing The Change-Up together).