I would have done this review last week but I thought it was unnecessary. When I saw The Switch, I thought, "Surely this will surpass Avatar at the box office so why waste my time reviewing it?" so I must accept at least part of the blame for it's poor ninth place opening this week. I will now try to rectify that by urging you all to see what some call an unimaginably amazing film and others call a life changing experience.
The Switch is about a woman named Kassie played by Jennifer Aniston. Her presence in the film just deepens the shock I felt when I saw its poor box office showing as Jennifer Aniston's name is synonymous with box office gold. Anyway, Kassie is close to leaving her childbearing years and still has not met Mr. Right so she decides to have a baby using donated sperm. Little does she know that her best friend Wally (Jason Bateman) got drunk, accidentally destroyed the sperm so he did what any one of us would have done, including the women. He replaced it with his own sperm.
At this point, you're probably thinking, "That's kind of gross. Isn't this supposed to be a romantic comedy?" You're right. It's being promoted as a romantic comedy even though it doesn't contain a single laugh. Not one. And that's the beauty of The Switch. The Switch takes the antiquated concept that "romantic comedy" automatically equals "funny" and slaps that concept in the face. Instead of giving us lovable, charismatic characters who make us laugh as we come to care about them, The Switch gives us truly loathsome human beings who serve as an excellent argument for death camps doing things so horrible that they make us cringe and cause us to think that they are actually demons from the lowest circle of Hell who've taken human form to corrupt our species.
Do you see now where the laughs come in? Perhaps not. I've come to suspect that it takes a sophisticated mind to appreciate the subtle humor of The Switch and too many minds have been dumbed down these days by your YouTubes and your Facebooks and your sexting and your Gagas and your fluoridated water and whatever the hell fluffernutter is made of. Our society simply can't grasp the idea that a movie about a man who does something so repulsive to a woman he supposedly loves can also be warm, uplifting and life affirming. The Switch makes you feel like you are listening to the song of the human spirit while simultaneously making you want to puke. The box office problems The Switch has been having are almost certainly due to the fact that most people want to laugh but are unwilling to accept the puking as the price they must pay.
Hopefully, you are not one of those backward thinking people but, if you are, go see The Switch anyway and do not resist as it drags you not only into the 21st century but into a new state of consciousness and world view. If you don't, you'll always be sorry.
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