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"FacebookPinterest\n\nIn the new body swap comedy, The Change-Up, two white guys switch souls after pissing in a magical water fountain. Yup, that's the titular \"change-up.\" For a film that's about ostensibly swapping identities, it's hardly much of a swap. The only tangible difference between these guys is that Mitch (Ryan Reynolds) lives a bachelor's life and Dave (Jason Bateman) has a family. Throw in a wedding, some sperm, a divorce and, bam, body switch. And yet, despite the wonky plot\u2014and regardless of the fact that a baby shoots poop in Bateman's mouth within the first two minutes\u2014there's an oddly compelling idea somewhere in this movie: Two guys have switched, and yet, they haven't switched at all.\n\nThe Change-Up comes from a long line of beloved, but historically crappy \"body swap\" films. Each tells the same tale: 1) Two people accidentally switch souls, either through a wish or a \"mysterious object,\" 2) They learn that the other person's day-to-day sucks ass even more than their own terrible life, and 3) Everything goes back to normal; they return to their bodies wiser, less disgruntled members of society. This outline comes from the Papa Smurf of the genre, Disney's 1976 Freaky Friday, in which a mother and daughter trade places. It's only a pseudo-classic, but in the 35 years that followed, it's been remade\u2014in one form or another\u2014about two dozen times. Each attempt usually turns out crappier than the last. But these movies don't really need to be concerned with quality. The concept sells the movie alone, and it's too good to do only once. It's got everything: PG-rated wish fulfillment, slapstick comedy mid with extreme dramatic irony, and a dependably optimistic moral: Everyone's life is equally good and bad. Hooray! The body swap flick will never stop being made, because it's the kind of movie night parents can count on.\n\nLike a bad game of telephone, remake-after-remake brought each film further and further away from the original concept. In the first Freaky Friday remake, 1987's Like Father, Like Son, the characters don't even want to switch bodies. The point of the original is that the characters want the other person's life. In 1988's 18 Again!, a grandpa and grandson switch places. The kid, as the grandpa, is in a coma throughout the entire movie. 1992's Prelude to a Kiss plays out more like Beauty and the Beast, while 2002's The Hot Chick is mostly about seeing Rob Schneider in drag. Only 2003's Freaky Friday remake works, since it's modeled after the only film that got it right. These are not to be confused with the far superior \"single swap\" films, like 1984's Trading Places and All of Me, as well as 1988's Big and 1999's Face/Off. Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich exists separately, because, well, it's about a wormhole into the body of John Malkovich.\n\nWhich brings us back to The Change-Up. The film about two white guys switching bodies. Basically, it's like a kid's movie that only adults are allowed to watch\u2014all the plot clich\u00E9s of Freaky Friday, but with dick jokes and Ryan Reynolds saying things like, \"Fucky-fucky.\" So there goes the core audience that this family-friendly genre cultivated for three decades. And yet, the nuanced white guy-white guy swap and sexualized humor allows The Change-Up to hit on something that its ancestors couldn't: the philosophical and moral implications of body-swapping. For that, you can thank the scenes involving masturbation, adultery, and a pregnant woman who is DTF.\n\nPrevious body swaps, of course, avoid these moments, but they happen anyway. In the original Freaky Friday, for example, the daughter, having swapped bodies with her hot mom, accidentally calls the father \"Daddy.\" His eyes widen and he responds slyly, \"You've never me called me 'Daddy,' before...\" The man is turned on by his daughter and he doesn't even know it! In Like Father Like Son, the 11-year-old kid, in the body of his father, goes to the bathroom and, for a moment, inspects his fully-grown genitalia and yells, \"AWESOME!\" The 11-year-old who looks at and cheers about his Dad's junk is played by Fred Savage, FYI. They're in different bodies now, but does that make it OK? It's hard to say. Whatever the case, that is all wrong\u2014or maybe it's perfectly fine. Kids movies never judge the issue. But The Change-Up purposely creates these perverse scenarios and, going meta, assesses them alongside the viewer.\n\nIn one scene, ladies man Mitch, in the body of Dave, encourages his pal to sleep with frequent bed-buddy Tatiana. Dave says that would be cheating on his wife, to which Mitch responds, \"Fucking in the mind is not cheating.\" Let's think about that. They're really arguing about the question, \"What makes us us?\" The roles of the body and the soul are unclear in this instance. It's Mitch's body that would be doing all the fucking, but then again, it's Dave who's controlling the body. And that's the paradox: The two can't be separated; the body needs the mind to function, while the mind needs the body to exist. So maybe it's more like Mitch and Dave would be doing the fucking...at the same time. Or not. Plato and Descartes had trouble with these kinds of questions, too, you know.\n\nAnother revealing moment comes when Dave, in the body of Mitch, gets caught masturbating by the real Mitch. \"Are you jerking off?\" he asks. \"Isn't that my dick?\" Flashback to Plutarch, a Greek philosopher who used the analogy of \"Theseus' ship\" to ask a similar question: The ship of Theseus is frequently renovated. Old decaying planks of wood are replaced until none of the original planks are left, but the ship still functions and looks the same. Is it still Theseus' ship? The Change-Up recreates the ship analogy, but with a penis. Is Mitch, masturbating via the body of Dave, touching Dave's dick? Technically, no. Metaphysically, uh, yes. Sorry bro.\n\nBut then there's one more key issue: Mitch, in the body of Dave, really wants to bone his buddy's wife. If he does, would that be sleeping with your best friend's wife or not? Face/Off, technically a \"face swap\" movie, has a similar moment. In the film, John Travolta and Nicolas Cage's faces are surgically switched. Cage's character uses this \"disguise\" to infiltrate his adversary's home and sleep with his wife, who thinks Cage is Travolta. This forces us to imagine the body swap on more realistic terms, which is infinitely more disgusting because a) there's a question of rape and b) it's late '90s Nic Cage, not Moonstruck Cage. Maybe this is the right way to think about The Change-Up: If you swap souls, then you've also swapped dicks. That old body ain't yours anymore. So hold it in. Never whiz in a magical water fountain\u2014it's not worth all the existential anxiety."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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