‘Family Switch’ Review: Jennifer Garner’s Netflix Body-Swap Comedy Is Ideal Holiday Background Filler – Hollywood Reporter

Probably the most superb film to observe with household over the vacations is one everybody can love — one broadly compelling sufficient to persuade everybody from disaffected tweens to grumpy grandparents to put aside their drama and are available collectively in mutual awe. Barring that, the second most superb film to observe with household may simply be one nobody can really hate. That’s the place Netflix’s Household Swap resides.

The body-swap comedy isn’t good a lot as it’s fully and completely innocuous. Its characters are drawn within the broadest of strokes and the plot factors unfold alongside creakily predictable beats, however it’s too blandly candy to be irritating or offensive. If you happen to’re simply seeking to fill a movie-shaped gap in your vacation plans, that may make it satisfactory sufficient.

On the middle of the McG-directed movie are the Walkers, a brood of upper-middle-class overachievers. Mother Jess (Jennifer Garner) is a hotshot architect on the verge of constructing companion at her large agency. Dad Invoice (Ed Helms) is a rock musician turned cool band trainer. Seventeen-year-old CC (Emma Myers) is such a gifted soccer participant that she’s bought the U.S. nationwide crew in her sights, and Wyatt (Brady Midday) is such a STEM whiz that he’s making use of for early acceptance to Yale as a ninth-grader.

Regardless of all these blessings, they’re beset by oh-so-relatable generational clashes. Kind-A Jess and messy CC butt heads over the latter’s profession plans. Extroverted Invoice and nerdy Wyatt have so little in widespread that Invoice jokes about not being Wyatt’s actual father. It’ll take a miracle to resolve these seemingly minor squabbles, apparently, and that’s precisely what they get. Simply earlier than Jess’ large presentation, CC’s large sport, Wyatt’s large school interview and Invoice’s large efficiency together with his band Dad or Alive (Weezer cameo as his bandmates), the Walkers swap our bodies by some unexplained magic that someway includes an Uber driver performed by Rita Moreno.

It ought to be an appealingly high-stakes premise, however Household Swap makes its anodyne sensibility clear lengthy earlier than any of the magical stuff even happens. Within the first minutes of the film, Invoice snags a part of a candy-cane costume on a Christmas tree, slips on the puddle of canine urine beneath his ft and takes the entire tree down with him as he topples. Regardless of Helms’ dedicated physicality, there’s a rote high quality to the complete pratfall. It feels much less like an actual joke than the define of 1. However it’s simply adequate to warrant a small smile — perhaps extra for simply amused youngsters or adults who simply actually get pleasure from watching Ed Helms fall on his face. In any case, the movie strikes on earlier than the gag can put on out its welcome.

As soon as the characters do swap our bodies, the enjoyable of seeing them commerce locations is considerably undermined by a script (by Victoria Strouse and Adam Sztykiel) that offers none of them a particular persona within the first place. The youthful leads at the very least have the benefit of aping performers we’re conversant in already, and Myers specifically nails Garner’s supermom vibe. Against this, Garner and Helms are sport for something — together with belching, farting and retching — however all their enthusiastic mugging can’t masks the truth that CC and Wyatt aren’t far more than a stereotypical surly teen and a stereotypical geek.

Solely twice did I really snort out loud through the 100-minute film: as soon as throughout a 13 Occurring 30 reference that offered a welcome glint of self-awareness from a movie that in any other case demonstrates no real interest in attempting something new with the method it’s following; and as soon as throughout an argument about freeways that registered as probably the most authentically Angeleno second in a narrative that includes a number of journeys to the Griffith Observatory.

Evidently, the characters across the Walkers fare no higher. Many of those bit roles are crammed by vivid comedian skills like Paul Scheer, Pete Holmes and Xosha Roquemore, however even they wrestle to make a lot of an impression in such one-dimensional elements. That is a kind of motion pictures wherein not one of the supporting figures appear to have something happening past no matter the principle characters want from them at any given second — whether or not it’s the bully (Cyrus Arnold) whose emotions about Wyatt pivot seemingly out of nowhere, or the coworker (Ilia Isorelys Paulino) who has nothing higher to do than reassure Jess (actually CC) that she actually is an unbelievable mom.

It’s most likely not a lot shock, then, that Household Swap‘s emotional facet doesn’t hit very arduous both. Sometimes the script hints ever so gingerly at deeper hurts. Jess’ concern about CC’s soccer aspirations is revealed to stem from her personal thwarted athletic profession, and Invoice is rumored by his college students to have given up the chance to be part of Inexperienced Day, or Black Sabbath, or another “band a couple of colour,” to boost his household. A braver film may need dug additional into the mother and father’ ambivalence about what they’ve given up. However this one is virtually allergic to battle and issue, and so it brushes previous these insights in favor of reassuring clichés in regards to the rewards and joys of parenthood.

Paradoxically, this insistent niceness makes Household Swap much less heartwarming than it looks like it ought to be. It’s merely arduous to really feel all that deeply for characters so flat and candy they may as effectively be gingerbread folks, resolving issues that hardly appeared to exist within the first place. However it additionally makes the movie fully and completely protected as background filler. There’s nothing right here that dangers mentioning troublesome or painful conversations, or steering towards an sad ending, or pressuring viewers to choose sides whilst you’re simply attempting to curve that final little bit of ribbon or untangle that final string of lights. And when you don’t want it anymore, there’s nothing right here that dangers lingering in your reminiscence for higher or for worse, both.