‘The Switch’
There must be something in the water. Or something in the air.
Something that might account for the recent arrival of not one, not two, but three movies in which artificial insemination plays a pivotal role.
In "The Kids Are All Right" -- far and away the best, and still playing at a theater near you -- artificial insemination is merely the catalyst for insightful interactions between parents (adoptive and biological) and kids alike.
Unfortunately, "The Switch" -- this week's entry in the Sperm Donor Cinema sweepstakes -- has a lot more in common with April's "The Back-up Plan."
Don't remember that one? Can't blame you -- it's the eminently forgettable alleged romantic comedy in which Jennifer Lopez's character undergoes artificial insemination, only to meet the man of her dreams immediately afterward.
If you can wait till Tuesday, you can check out "The Back-up Plan" on DVD. Or you can go to the movies this weekend and check out "The Switch" instead.
It's got a similar plot and a Jennifer as leading lady -- this time Jennifer Aniston, once again doing the New York singleton thing.
In "The Switch," she's Kassie Larson, a successful 40-ish TV executive who's no longer able to ignore the ever-louder ticking of her biological clock.
As author Jeffrey Eugenides ("The Virgin Suicides," "Middlesex") writes in "The Baster," the 1996 New Yorker short story that inspired "The Switch," Kassie "had to give up the idea of meeting someone she could spend her life with. Instead, she had to give birth to someone who would spend life with her."
Kassie's next step: find a suitable sperm donor.
Naturally, it would never occur to Kassie to ask the best friend to whom she's baring her baby-craving soul: Wally Mars (Jason Bateman), a rumpled, neurotic, self-deprecating and thoroughly endearing financial whiz who (but of course) has loved Kassie for what seems like forever.
No, Kassie's got something else in mind entirely. And finds him in the strapping Roland (amusingly hunky Patrick Wilson), the best of all possible sperm donors. After all, he's a lit professor (even better, he teaches feminist literature), he's a rugged outdoorsman -- and he's married, so there's no danger of any annoying emotional entanglement.
Except, perhaps, when Kassie invites the understandably anguished Wally to a party to celebrate her artificial insemination -- and Wally proceeds to get so plastered he doesn't remember replacing Roland's studly sperm with his own.
Not that it matters, because once Kassie discovers she's expecting, she moves back to her native Midwest and leaves Wally in his usual state of unrequited everything.
Seven years later, however, Kassie's back in New York -- along with her almost-7-year-old son Sebastian (Thomas Robinson), who turns out to be precious, precocious and eerily reminiscent of his biological father, leading to the inevitable complications.
They're all quite predictable, taking "The Switch" exactly where you expect it to go.
But there are worse things than watching attractive people tie themselves into knots as they attempt to unravel their own overly complicated lives.
There would be better things -- if "The Switch" more closely followed its far edgier literary source.
But screenwriter Allan Loeb ("21," the upcoming "Wall Street" sequel) clearly knows better than to stir things up by getting dark and deep in a movie that would rather be bright and breezy.
Directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck, getting a crack at something a bit less exaggerated than "Blades of Glory" and TV's "Cavemen," conjure a suitably sleek storybook Manhattan, where everybody's got a great job, lives in a great apartment and treats parenthood as just another diversion in a life filled with them.
Speaking of diversions, the attractive Aniston almost feels like one in a movie that's supposed to focus on her.
For that, you can blame Bateman, who neatly steals the movie from under Aniston's perky little nose.
He's the one with the wit and presence to hold the screen, even opposite the adorable little Robinson -- and you know what W.C. Fields said about working with dogs or kids. (Maybe it's because Bateman used to be a kid star himself back in the "Silver Spoons" days.)
Their scenes together form the heart of "The Switch," leaving Aniston a virtual bystander for much of the movie. He's also the one who best captures the rueful tone of Eugenides' original story, glimmers of which occasionally show through "The Switch's" otherwise glossy veneer.
It's a haunting reminder of what might have been -- along with the quirky presences of Jeff Goldblum and Juliette Lewis, who enliven their thankless best-friend characters with welcome deadpan humor.
Goldblum in particular approaches his abbreviated role with throwaway dash, almost as if he's a 27-years-later version of his cynical "Big Chill" character, still quipping his way through a life that's outwardly successful but too vapid for him to take seriously.
Come to think of it, that assessment also holds true for "The Switch." It's hardly a disaster (especially when compared with some of this summer's high-profile stinkbombs), but it's hardly the kind of romantic comedy to make anyone's happy-ever-after dreams come true.
Contact movie critic Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.
Carol Cling's Movie Minute
Review
"The Switch"
100 minutes
PG-13; mature thematic content, sexual material including dialogue, nudity, drug use, profanity
Grade: C
at multiple locations
Deja View
Sperm donors have played roles in movies from "21 Grams" to "Seed of Chucky" -- and these five disparate comedies:
"Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986) -- In writer-director Woody Allen's Oscar-winning triumph, a flashback sequence finds the title character (Mia Farrow) and her then-husband (Allen) asking a flabbergasted friend (Tony Roberts) to donate his sperm.
"Twins" (1988) -- Conceived in a multiple-donor genetic experiment, the title siblings (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito) -- one a con man, the other a childlike genius -- seek their long-lost mother once they learn of each other's existence at age 35.
"Leon the Pig Farmer" (1992) -- In this quirky British comedy, a London real estate agent (Mark Frankel) from a proper Jewish family finds that, due to a mix-up at the sperm bank, he's the son of a decidedly non-Jewish Yorkshire pig farmer.
"Made in America" (1993) -- The daughter (Nia Long) of a proud black bookstore owner (Whoopi Goldberg) discovers she's the product of artificial insemination -- and her biological father's a white hillbilly (Ted Danson) who sells used cars on TV.
"A Modern Affair" (1996) -- A successful corporate consultant (Lisa Eichhorn) undergoes artificial insemination and becomes pregnant, then resorts to computer espionage to track down the anonymous sperm donor (Stanley Tucci).
-- By CAROL CLING
