While the popular and romantic reason people have kids is to fulfill a loving relationship, its pretty safe to say that a good number of kids are brought into the world thanks to one too many glasses of wine and a carefully timed Sade CD. And while that latter situation has been spun numerous times in countless films, in “The Switch” by Will Gordon and Josh Speck (“Blades Of Glory”), the premise is given a bit of a contemporary twist.
The story follows Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston), a forty-year-old working in a vaguely described job in television, who faces the problem of being single and having a biological clock that is quickly running out of sand in the hourglass. Worried about never finding the right man with whom to start a family, she decides to use a sperm donor to get pregnant. Her best friend and former partner Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) is chafed at not being asked and also somewhat against her plan altogether, feeling that it’s a hasty decision. But Kassie forges on, finding the perfect donor in smart, handsome, college professor Roland (Patrick Wilson) and throws an insemination party put together by her hippy dippy friend Debbie (Juliette Lewis).
As part of the party — something which we hope we never get invited too — the donor quietly retires to the bathroom to, amidst all the revelry, ejaculate his material into a cup and much drinking and food eating ensues. Wally gets shitfaced and on a trip to the bathroom stumbles across Roland’s material which for whatever inexplicable reason is being stored on a shelf with towels and other general bathroom stuff (wouldn’t it go in a fridge?). Anyway, drunken Wally accidentally drops the cup into the sink and decides to replace the material with his own. Wally blacks out and doesn’t remember what he did, while Kassie gets pregnant and moves away from New York City only to come back with a child in tow years later. And that’s when Wally comes face-to-face with the result of his drunken night of sperm swapping.
From here the story has the choice to go in two directions, either focusing on how Kassie deals with the fact that her child isn’t from “perfect sperm,” and how it shapes her relationship with Wally or spend tedious amounts of time on Wally’s decision to even tell Kassie (after he pieces together the events of that night) about his transgression. Unfortunately for the audience, the latter option is the direction the screenplay heads in and what could have been an insightful — and still amusing — look at contemporary relationships becomes a boring run through cliché rom-com misunderstandings.
You know things are headed in the wrong direction when we first get a look at the kid, Sebastian (Thomas Robinson), when Kassie returns to New York City after having moved back to Minnesota. You see, Wally is a hypochondriac, a pessimist and a neurotic, so naturally, his five year old equivalent will act like a Mini-Me version of his father right down to the carefully ruffled bedhead hair. But as if this wasn’t enough, he is saddled with enough quirks for a Wes Anderson film gone out of control. He collects picture frames, is a zealous animal rights advocate and just happens to be the most morose kid you’re ever likely to meet. Your endurance with this film will largely depend on if you find Sebastian’s rumpled coat demeanor charming or not.
But the film’s biggest fault is that the two leads are the most boring characters in the film. The supporting cast of Jeff Goldblum, doing his usual eccentric guy thing as Wally’s boss; the delightfully drippy Juliette Lewis as Kassie’s new-agey friend and Patrick Wilson as a deeply vulnerable yet raging A-type personality are far more interesting and entertaining. In fact, Wilson surprises with a great, comedic turn that has a lot of heart and watching the film, we imagined how much more fascinating and original a film from his perspective might have been.
“The Switch,” previously known as “The Baster” (which is definitely a worse title), rode a wave of buzz thanks to Loeb’s script for the film finding its way onto the Black List, but we are completely baffled at what people saw in it. Unless it went through some drastic revisions from script to screen, Loeb’s film attempts to twist the standard single parent/rom-com formula but doesn’t take it far enough. There is a great film somewhere in this material but it simply isn’t on screen. And with one scene that is a direct homage to the excellent 1979 single parent drama “Kramer Vs. Kramer” you can tell that Loeb’s ambitions are huge but his high concept can’t get past its rote execution.
There’s not much of a silver lining around “The Switch.” We definitely feel for Jason Bateman whose career resurgence on “Arrested Development” is still yet to find material worthy of his talent on the big screen, but we hope that changes with “Horrible Bosses” (also with Jennifer Aniston) and “The Change Up” next year. As for Bateman’s co-star, while she’ll be glad for this year of flops to be over (“The Bounty Hunter” is still a not too distant memory) she too will rebound. If anything the film at least confirms that Will Gordon and Josh Speck can direct in something that doesn’t require them to just turn on a camera and watch Will Ferrell go mental.
Unlike “Eat Pray Love” which we didn’t love or really hate either, we can’t say as we did about that film that “The Switch” will play well to its base. Everything about the film feels half-baked or lukewarm in a way that even less discerning audiences will still feel. Robbed at every turn of being insightful or meaningful, if you do end up with a ticket in your hand, we won’t blame you if you switch it for something else (and yes, that’s a lame joke, sue us). [C]