‘Family Switch’ is your standard fun body-switch movie
Just when I thought I was never going to have to review another body- switching movie, along comes “Family Switch” from Netflix for the holidays.
Directed by the filmmaker known as McG, whose credits include “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” and “Terminator Salvation,” and scripted by Victoria Strouse (“Let It Snow”), Adam Sztykiel (“Black Adam”) and Amy Krouse Rosenthal (“You May Want to Marry My Husband”), “Family Switch” has a title that is too on the nose.
It tells the Christmas-themed tale of the supposedly dysfunctional Walker family. Mother Jess (Jennifer Garner) is an architect. Father Bill (Ed Helms), who totally scored when he got the much better-looking Jess to marry him, teaches music at the school attended by his two older children.
They are precocious smarty pants Wyatt (Brady Noon, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem”) and soccer-playing phenom CC (Emma Myers, better known as the werewolf roommate of Wednesday Addams on “Wednesday.”)
Within the first three minutes of the film, we hear the Jackson 5 perform “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and see Helms clumsily knock over the family Christmas tree. It’s a wonderful life, no? To the tune of Wet Leg’s “Chaise Longue,” Wyatt and family go to the Griffith Observatory to see a “planetary alignment.”
Outside, they meet Angelica (the EGOT known as Rita Moreno) in a vintage van. By the end of this sequence, Jess, CC, Bill and Wyatt have traded bodies, making the parents the kids and the kids the parents. Also the Walker baby Miles ( Lincoln Sykes and Theodore Sykes) has traded places with the family dog. The baby’s storyline will involve a quirky German- sounding neighbor named Rolf (Matthias Schweighöfer) who babysits the doggy Miles and the Miles-like canine while the other family members attempt to pretend everything is normal.
Of course, nothing is. Brainiac Wyatt, who is really Bill, has an interview for an early spot at Yale. Jess, who is really CC, has a big presentation at her firm, where she is up for a promotion. Bill, who is really Wyatt, has a show to put on with his band, and CC, who is now Jess, has a big soccer game played for some reason in front of a full BMO Stadium audience and a
professional soccer team scout. The pressure is on. In order to switch back, the Walkers must try to recreate the conditions of the first switch. To do so they need a special lens for the observatory telescope, which has gone missing.
If any of this sounds ridiculously contrived, it is. Don’t even ask if there is mistletoe.
“Family Switch” is half jukebox movie, full of classic Christmas-themed music, vintage rock and half-lame and thoroughly sentimental throwbacks to 1980s films like “Big” and “18 Again!” In keeping with the ’80s theme, the Black characters in the film come close to being stereotypes. The dialogue works so hard to be clever that I think I broke something listening to it.
But much of what is problematic about “Family Switch” is ameliorated by a talented cast. Garner and Helms are both gifted comic actors. Comedian Fortune Feimster is fine as the comic Coach Kim. Wink and you may miss Howie Mandel. But the four lead actors have family chemistry, and Myers is a lot of fun, reminding me that I was surprisingly impressed watching her play the creepy and kooky Enid Sinclair on “Wednesday” (which will be back on Netflix on Jan. 6 for Season 2).
In the meantime, you can give the far from perfect, but at times amusing “Family Switch” a whirl.