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THE SWITCH stars Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman .

By SANDRA OLMSTED

In the The Switch, which is more worth seeing for the acting than the predictable, more-sweet-than-funny story, Jennifer Aniston (The Bounty Hunter) imbues Kassie with her mature, everywoman charm which adds much to the film.  However, since the first images are of Jason Bateman (Couples Retreat), the audience knows it is not Aniston’s character, but Bateman’s, which is central to the story.

Seeming to have come into his own as a leading man, Bateman rises to the occasion and very much carries the film as Wally Mars, a milquetoast Wall Street analyst whom Kassie relegated to “the friendship zone” seven years ago.  Unfortunately, Wally really loves Kassie, but fears losing her friendship if he confesses his true feelings.  While Bateman and Aniston have great chemistry as friends, their characters never have a romantic spark that would make it a great romance.

When Kassie announces that she has decided to have a baby on her own because her biological clock is running down, Wally eagerly volunteers his “ingredients,” which is one of the  euphemisms which screenwriter Allan Loeb (Streak) uses to refer to the donated sperm.  Kassie, however, has no interest in Wally’s “contribution” and hires Roland (Patrick Wilson, The A-Team), a studly, but broke and married, associate professor of feminist literature to be her donor.

Kassie’s best friend, Debbie (Juliette Lewis, Sympathy for Delicious), who is delightfully shrill and tasteless as on only Lewis can be, throws Kassie an insemination party, and Kassie insists that Wally attend the party to show his support of her decision because they are “best friends.”  Wally “wallys it up,” which is how his friends euphemistically refer to the way only Wally can screw things up:  He gets too drunk and accepts a prescription medication from Debbie.  Before long, he’s spilled Roland’s seed and, in a moment of as close to wild abandonment as he has ever gotten, Wally replaces Roland’s “ingredients” with his own.  The booze and drug block most memory of the switch.  However, in his drunk stupor, Wally confesses his switch to his buddy Leonard, played expertly by Jeff Goldblum (Adam Resurrected); unfortunately, Wally’s wild ramblings make little sense at the time to Leonard.

As soon as Kassie is pregnant, she moves back home to Minnesota, and Wally continues to live his boring, lonely life.  Then seven years later, Kassie returns to New York with the six-year-old Sebastian (Thomas Robinson, TV’s Heroes) in tow.  Sebastian, a moody, neurotic, hypochondriacal chip off of Wally’s block, couldn’t possibly be Roland’s offspring, but Kassie refuses to see it and begins a relationship with the recently divorced Roland.  Meanwhile, Wally begins to remember that he “hijacked her pregnancy” during several deliciously amusing conversations with Leonard.  Now Wally must deal with another clock ticking towards the eleventh hour as Roland confides to Wally that he plans to propose to Kassie.

At this point the film begins to drag because Kassie always prevents Wally from getting a word in edgewise and assumes she knows what Wally is going to say; however, since it is a romantic fantasy, Wally telling Kassie the truth clearly leads to Wally getting his dream girl.  The directing team of Josh Gordon and Will Speck (Blades of Glory) get kudos for casting fine actors and getting stellar performances on screen, but the film is flawed because it lacks much suspense about the ending.

A Miramax Films release, The Switch is a loose adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1996 story “Baster,” which was originally published in The New Yorker. The film runs 101 minutes and is rated PG-13 for mature thematic content, sexual material including dialogue, some nudity, drug use and language.

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