We’re Almost Embarrassed to Admit How Much We’re Looking Forward to ‘The Change-Up’

Tim Grierson
·Editor
You can tell Ryan Reynolds is in shock because of what he's doing with his hand. Universal Pictures
You can tell Ryan Reynolds is in shock because of what he's doing with his hand. Universal Pictures

Deep down, we know we probably shouldn't like the red-band trailer for the comedy "The Change-Up" as much as we do. C'mon, another body-switch movie? Really? Even worse, it's a body-switch movie that's basically a bromance. Does anybody really need to see one of those? Well, apparently we do, because we find this trailer pretty hysterical.

Since we haven't seen the movie, we have no way of knowing how good "The Change-Up" will be when it comes out in August. But as a means to get people excited for a film, this trailer is pretty perfect. In it we're informed that the movie comes from the director of "Wedding Crashers" (David Dobkin) and the writers of "The Hangover" (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore), but that wouldn't mean much if the jokes in this clip weren't funny. But, thankfully, they are: While we're worried that the film is gonna be filled with the poop-and-random-male-nudity bits that are alluded to in the trailer, we laughed a decent amount during this three-minute spot.

A lot of that has to do with the casting. While we're sorta over Vince Vaughn and a lot of his cronies, Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman seem just right playing two friends with predictably very different lives: Bateman's the devoted family man, while Reynolds is the wild single guy. But one night hanging out together they mention that they wish they had each other's lives and then, presto, they wake up in each other's bodies the following morning. So now Bateman (in Reynolds' body) can make a move on the hot girl in his office, and Reynolds (in Bateman's body) can have sex with Bateman's wife.

This is a familiar setup -- it's like "Face/Off: The Comedy" -- and we admit to not having a lot of faith in Dobkin. ("Wedding Crashers" is the only movie he's made that anybody ever liked.) But the trailer's main objective is to sell us on the rapport these two guys have, and it does that very, very well. Sure, we still have reservations about this presumably R-rated comedy -- basically, the stuff they include in this trailer that makes it red-band is the least funny -- but our hopes are much higher for this film than they were 24 hours ago.

Here's the NSFW trailer:

EXCLUSIVE: 'The Change-Up' R-Rated Trailer and Poster Debut [Moviefone]