★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is in her thirties, and she's single, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon she decides she can no longer wait to have a child. She talks the matter over with her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) - they dated six years ago, and though it didn't work out they've got along swimmingly ever since...
(3/4)
Directors: Josh Gordon, Will Speck | Producers: Albert Berger, Ron Yerxa | Screenplay: Allan Loeb | Based on: ‘Baster’ by Jeffrey Eugenides | Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Patrick Wilson, Juliette Lewis, Jeff Goldblum, Thomas Robinson | Music: Alex Wurman | Cinematography: Jess Hall | Editor: John Axelrad
Kassie Larson (Jennifer Aniston) is in her thirties, and she’s single, and with no romantic prospects on the horizon she decides she can no longer wait to have a child. She talks the matter over with her best friend Wally Mars (Jason Bateman) – they dated six years ago, and though it didn’t work out they’ve got along swimmingly ever since – but despite his reservations, her mind is made up. She’s not averse to a degree of intimacy: eschewing a bank, she wants a sperm donor she can meet. Wally does the chivalrous thing and makes the offer, but gently Kassie notes that he’s neurotic, and besides isn’t accepting sperm from a friend more than a little weird?
Instead Kassie opts for the charming and hunky and gainfully employed Roland, who is married, but he and his wife, an aspiring English professor, could use the extra cash. Bizarrely – do such things really exist? – Kassie throws an insemination party, where between cocktails and canapés and light conversation Roland slips off to the bathroom to make his deposit inside of a plastic cup. Whereupon Wally, still put out by the whole ordeal, stumbles drunkenly into the very same bathroom, spills Roland’s seed into the sink, and manufactures his own hasty replacement, thereby providing us with the titular ‘switch’. Kassie returns to her hometown of Minnesota to have the baby, but seven years later with six-year-old Sebastian in tow she is back in New York.
Based on a short story by Jeffrey Eugenides, entitled ‘Baster’ and published in The New Yorker in 1996, in its adaptation for the big screen The Switch is as formulaic as they come. We are never in doubt as to the outcome, and the well-worn path of conflict resolution follows every signpost, in a confection that’s decidedly sweet. But the convoluted premise is handled fairly gently by directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck, and with the aid of a delightful cast, there are shoots and blossoms: for a modern romantic comedy, The Switch is lighter and better than most.
The movie tends to err on the side of caution: inevitably there are moments of smutty humour surrounding Kassie’s insemination and Wally’s mishandling of the cup, but The Switch never parodies human behaviour, its slapstick is restrained, and its relationships make sense. Jeff Goldblum and Juliette Lewis are delicious foils for Bateman and Aniston, respectively Leonard and Debbie, Wally’s attentive if ever so slightly supercilious boss and Kassie’s caustic best friend. Crucially Patrick Wilson as Roland isn’t some sleazeball pulling the wool over people’s eyes, nor is he a hapless fop: instead he’s a decent guy slightly fraying on the outside of the movie’s core dynamics. Thomas Robinson as Sebastian is charming without being cloying in the mould of most child actors, and he brings surprising emotional depth.
Bateman hits every single note as the relationship between Wally and Sebastian progresses from friendship to fatherhood with desperate uncertainty in between: The Switch is really Bateman’s film, and for an actor who often promises much while falling into familiar schlock comic roles, it’s fair to say that this is a standout performance. There is an attempt towards an Up in the Air-esque framing narrative, aphoristic and seeking to elevate what we’ve seen, and it doesn’t come off, the script isn’t up to task, but it’s so slight that it’s of no real consequence. The Switch also boasts some nice location work, in restaurants, at a climbing centre, and in snapshots it does provide the impression of a living and breathing city.
