Penned by the screenwriting team behind The Hangover and directed by David Dobkin of Wedding Crashers fame, The Change-Up strives to outdo every R-rated comedy released this year in the raunch department. Thought the crapping-in-a-wedding-dress scene in Bridesmaids was too much? That baby poop bit tops it. Turned off by Cameron Diaz's foul mouth in Bad Teacher? Ryan Reynolds, who plays Mitch's best friend and committed single guy Mitch Planko, can't go two sentences without dropping an F-bomb and he's got such an extensive catalogue of racial jokes, one starts to suspect that he's a closet white supremacist. Felt that Horrible Bosses was horribly degrading to women, particularly thanks to Jennifer Aniston's rape-minded dentist? The Change-Up seems downright disgusted by the fairer sex, mocking one female character's bowel movements and positing the notion of sex with a pregnant woman as a trauma akin to waterboarding. It's all meant to be in good fun of course, and some of it is. But the film's relentless juvenilia grows wearisome after a while, especially when it becomes apparent that the filmmakers don't have any other comic tricks up their sleeves. The Change-Up successfully locates the lowest-common denominator every time it tries, but that's something of a dubious achievement.

The body-switching comedy is a genre that dates back to at least 1976, when a teen Jodie Foster swapped places with her screen mom Barbara Harris in Freaky Friday. Although the premise has been used countless times since, The Change-Up is somewhat unique in that the body switchers in questions aren't a parent and child or members of the opposite sex, but rather two best guy friends. Mitch and Dave have been buds ever since childhood, but their paths started to diverge around the college years, when Dave pursued a law degree at some of the nation's best institutions and nabbed a job at a prominent Atlanta firm straight out of school, where he's steadily climbed the ladder towards making partner. Along the way, he also found time to marry a beautiful woman, Jamie (Leslie Mann), and produce three beautiful children. Mitch, on the other hand, never had much of a life plan. Eschewing higher education, he's currently got a successful gig going as an out-of-work actor. While they're still pals, cracks have started to form in their relationship, due to their own insecurities and general dissatisfaction with their lives. While peeing in a fountain after a long night of drinking, each wishes they could walk in the other's shoes and, thanks to a convenient bit of magic, they wake up the next morning having switched places.

Naturally, the predictable hijinks ensue. Mitch-as-Dave -- whose sole knowledge of the law comes from episodes of Law & Order -- goes to his friend's office and almost gets him fired by screwing up a major deal. Meanwhile, Dave-as-Mitch -- who hasn't experienced the single life in decades -- struggles to match his pal's raging libido, pissing off at least one of his regular fuck buddies (the aforementioned pregnant lady). Mitch also has no idea how to be a husband and father, forgetting dates with Jamie and, in one of the movie's funniest scenes, constantly putting Dave's twin babies in harm's way while prepping for their nightly feeding. As time passes though, they actually start to enjoy inhabiting different skins. Dave takes advantage of having his own bachelor's pad to get some quality reading and masturbating done (he gets a few pointers on how to handle his new equipment from Mitch) and also gets to live out of his fantasy of dating his super-hot legal assistant (Olivia Wilde, in yet another content-free movie role). Mitch, on the other hand, discovers that he likes the level of commitment that comes with having a family and a job. Much like Wedding Crashers, the entire third act of The Change-Up is given over to teaching these overgrown boys what it means to be men... with plenty of dick jokes still in the mix, of course.

Since neither the script nor the direction is particularly inspired, the actors have to do a lot of heavy lifting to make the material play onscreen. Their hard work mostly pays off. Bateman in particular single-handedly wrings laughs out of scenes that really shouldn't be funny at all, which is all the more impressive when you consider how poorly conceived Mitch is as a character. With his xenophobia, cheerful misogyny and penchant for profanity, he's clearly been modeled after Kenny Powers, the horrible human being that Danny McBride plays to perfection on the HBO series Eastbound & Down. What makes Eastbound work, though, is the fact that the show consistently denies Kenny any possibility of redemption or personal growth. As a studio vehicle pitched at a mainstream audience, The Change-Up can't get away with that and its efforts to transform Mitch from a loser to a charmer largely fall flat. Still, it's undeniably amusing to watch Bateman casually toss off "Fuck me" to virtually everyone he meets. Reynolds isn't as naturally funny as his co-star, but he thankfully avoids the Van Wilder smarm here and generates some decent chemistry with Wilde's otherwise useless character. The single best performance, however, is given by Mann, who fearlessly puts herself in humiliating situations for a laugh and hits levels of honest emotion that the film frankly isn't prepared to deal with. (Somebody hook Mann up with Kristen Wiig pronto -- based on Bridesmaids, Wiig would know exactly how to put her skills to their best use.) In her hands, Jamie comes across as the only real person in a movie that's otherwise content to be a live-action juvenile cartoon that feels as though it were made by frat guys with a deep fear of commitment.

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