Ryan Reynolds (a promiscuous stoner douchebag-with-a-heart-of-gold) and his BFF since grade school, a much older-looking Jason Bateman (a family man with an insatiable appetite for success) star in David Dobkin’s (Wedding Crashers) latest bro-mantic comedy. The premise is as simple as it is stupid: the dudes get drunk, piss in a fountain and voila, switch bodies—and discover more about themselves, and each other, in the process. The female characters, including Bateman’s naggy wife (Leslie Mann) and Reynolds’ (sort of) love interest (Olivia Wilde), show off their tits and are the brunt of demeaning jokes. In the confines of Bateman’s body, Reynolds’ baby illiteracy is so extreme—carrying them like satchels and leaving them on kitchen counters with knives—he gives men a bad name. Fortunately, Reynolds and Bateman are skilled enough comedic actors to make the movie’s over-the-top cringe-worthiness not completely suffocating.
This article appears in Aug 4-10, 2011.