In The Switch Wally (Jason Bateman) is struggling to come to terms with his feelings when his best friend Kassie (Jennifer Aniston) decides to have a baby. However, because there isn’t a suitable man in her life she decides to get a donor, Roland (Patrick Wilson). In a haze brought about by some herbal medication, Wally switches Roland’s donation for his own, and when Kassie returns to the city seven years later he spends time with Sebastian, and eventually the repressed memory comes back to the forefront of his mind, but how can he tell Kassie when he knows it will jeopardise his relationship with her and the new bond he’s found with his son?
Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much when I went into this. I thought The Switch would be a forgettable but decent comedy but what I actually found was a refreshing rom-com with bags of heart. Bateman and Aniston have great chemistry together and the boy who played Sebastian, Thomas Robinson, was adorable without descending into the awkwardly annoying territory that used to befall so many child actors. All of them were on top form, and Patrick Wilson was his usual easy-going self. Oh, and Jeff Goldblum had a lot of fun with his part!
The film does suffer from the usual lack of communication that often drives the conflict in rom-coms, but there was only really one moment when I thought it was forced, the rest of the time you could see why Wally didn’t want to tell Kassie the truth. The biggest thing for me is that the comedy came first and the romance second, so it felt more subtle than other films in the genre. Another thing that it did differently to other rom-coms is that the ‘other guy’ wasn’t shown to be a douche. Too often in love triangles the female lead is with some other guy who is either a complete jerk or seems decent but is really a jerk underneath, and it’s only when this is uncovered that she realizes she loved the male lead all along. But The Switch doesn’t resort to such cheap tactics so all the characters feel real. It’s really sweet, really funny and I’d urge you to watch it if you get a chance.
