‘Family Switch’ review: Jennifer Garner’s Netflix body-swap comedy is the ideal holiday background filler

The most ideal movie to watch with the family during the holidays is one that everyone can love, one that is compelling enough to convince everyone from disgruntled preteens to grumpy grandparents to put aside their drama and join together in mutual amazement. Except for that, the second The most ideal movie to watch as a family might be one that no one can truly hate. That’s where Netflix is Family change resides.

The body-swap comedy isn’t so much good as it is completely and totally innocuous. Its characters are drawn with the broadest strokes and plot points develop along creaky, predictable beats, but it’s too sweet to be irritating or offensive. If you’re just looking to fill a movie-shaped gap in your vacation plans, that might make it quite acceptable.

At the center of the McG-directed film are the Walkers, a brood of high-achieving, upper-middle-class people. Mom Jess (Jennifer Garner) is a renowned architect who is about to become a partner in her large firm. Dad Bill (Ed Helms) is a rock musician turned genius band teacher. Seventeen-year-old CC (Emma Myers) is a soccer player so talented she has the U.S. national team in her sights, and Wyatt (Brady Noon) is a STEM genius who’s applying for early acceptance to Yale as a ninth grade student. qualifier.

Despite all those blessings, they are beset by generational clashes we can relate to. Type A Jess and messy CC clash over the latter’s career plans. The outgoing Bill and the nerdy Wyatt have so little in common that Bill jokes about not being Wyatt’s real father. Apparently it will take a miracle to resolve these seemingly minor disputes, and that’s exactly what they get. Just before Jess’s big performance, CC’s big game, Wyatt’s big college interview, and Bill’s big performance with his band Dad or Alive (Weezer makes a cameo as his bandmates), the Walkers swap bodies. through some inexplicable magic that somehow involves an Uber driver played by Rita. Dark.

It should be an attractive, high-risk premise, but Family change he makes his anodyne sensibility clear long before anything mystical happens. In the first few minutes of the film, Bill hooks part of a candy cane costume on a Christmas tree, slips in the puddle of dog urine under his feet, and takes the entire tree with him as he falls. Despite Helms’ compromised physicality, there is a rote quality to the entire fall. It seems less like an actual joke than the outline of one. But it’s good enough to warrant a small smile, perhaps more so for kids or easily amused adults who really enjoy watching Ed Helms fall on his face. In any case, the film moves forward before the joke can wear out its welcome.

Once the characters swap bodies, the fun of watching them swap places is somewhat undermined by a script (by Victoria Strouse and Adam Sztykiel) that doesn’t give any of them a distinctive personality in the first place. The younger leads at least have the benefit of emulating artists we already know, and Myers in particular nails Garner’s supermom vibe. By contrast, Garner and Helms are up for anything, including burping, farting, and gagging, but all their enthusiastic muggings can’t mask the fact that CC and Wyatt aren’t much more than a stereotypical sullen teenager and a stereotypical geek. .

Only twice did I laugh out loud during the 100 minutes of the movie: once during a 13 going on 30 reference that provided a welcome flash of self-awareness from a film that otherwise shows no interest in trying anything new with the formula it follows; and once during a discussion about freeways that went down as the most authentically Angeleno moment in a story involving multiple trips to Griffith Observatory.

Needless to say, the characters surrounding the Walkers don’t fare any better. Many of these small roles are played by vivid comedic talents like Paul Scheer, Pete Holmes, and Xosha Roquemore, but even they struggle to make a big impression in such one-dimensional roles. This is one of those movies where none of the supporting figures seem to have anything more than what the main characters need from them at any given moment, whether it’s the bully (Cyrus Arnold), whose feelings for Wyatt come seemingly out of nowhere. , or the coworker (Ilia Isorelys Paulino) who has nothing better to do than assure Jess (actually CC) that she really is an amazing mother.

It’s probably not too surprising, then, that Family changeThe emotional side doesn’t hit very hard either. From time to time, the script cautiously hints at deeper wounds. It is revealed that Jess’s concern about CC’s football aspirations stems from his own frustrated athletic career, and his students rumor that Bill has lost his chance to be part of Green Day, or Black Sabbath, or some other “band about a theme.” ”. color,” to raise her family. A grittier film might have delved deeper into the parents’ ambivalence about what they have abandoned. But he is practically allergic to conflict and difficulty, so he ignores these ideas in favor of reassuring clichés about the rewards and joys of parenthood.

Paradoxically, this insistent kindness makes Family change less moving than it seems it should be. It’s just hard to feel so much for such flat, sweet characters who might as well be gingerbread people, solving problems that barely seemed to exist in the first place. But it also makes the film completely and utterly safe as background filler. There’s nothing here that risks raising difficult or painful conversations, or leading to an unhappy ending, or pressuring viewers to choose sides while you try to wind the last piece of tape or untangle the last string of lights. And once you no longer need it, there will also be nothing here that risks remaining in your memory, for better or worse.