The red-band trailer and poster just hit for The Change-Up, which comes from Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin (don’t tell anyone he directed Fred Claus) and The Hangover writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (don’t tell anyone they wrote Four Christmases and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past). It stars Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds as two buds who mysteriously switch bodies while peeing together in a magical fountain one night.  Under the circumstances, I would’ve called it Body Swap Piss Fountain, but Hot Tub Time Machine bombed, so what do I know.   Anyway, Bateman plays a boring handsome married dude, while Reynolds plays a handsome exciting womanizer.  They switch bodies, and wouldn’t you know it, discover that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.  The trailer is distinguished by its multiple poop scenes.

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Not to excuse indifference to bloggerly responsibilities on my part, but Paul is the kind of movie that isn’t a lot of fun to review.  It’s not terrible, there aren’t any glaring inconsistencies, but it just doesn’t quite work.  It’s just not that funny.  It’s usually cute, but not quite laugh-worthy, and occasionally obnoxious, but not quite grating.  The word that most comes to mind is “thin.” It’s trivial.  It’s the acquaintance you always tell yourself you should call more but don’t, and deep down you know exactly why.

It’s a bit of a blue-ball dry rub considering the people involved.  I loved director Greg Mottola’s last two movies (Superbad and Adventureland), and getting the double-team from Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (who also wrote the script) is almost always a good thing.  The plot, two nerds find a wacky alien (voiced by Seth Rogen) and have to help it escape the US government that wants to study its brain and harvest its penises for fuel or whatever, is cribbed from the standard 80s-alien-movie formula (ET, Mac & Me, etc).  But rather than the clever genre homage seen in the Pegg co-written (with Edgar Wright, whose influence might have been needed here) Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, or the glowy, rich nostalgia of Mottola’s last two movies, what we get instead is just a series of throwaway references to every 80s alien movie, like they wrote it by going down a checklist.  Reese’s Pieces reference goes here… okay now what?  Not homage, not parody, just, as my co-viewer Brendan from the Frotcast put it, “one long wink.”

Winking at the audience can be fine, but… you should probably tell a joke first.

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Time for your mom's pelvic exam

Universal just released a new trailer for Paul, Greg Mottola’s homage to ET, Mac & Me, Harry and the Hendersons, etc., starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and a buttload of other comedic types.  It’s not the first trailer, so I don’t think I need to rehash my fervent Greg Mottola fandom for you again, but it is nice to see a trailer where no one gets hit in the nuts. Don’t get me wrong, I’d pay to see a trailer that was just Adam Levine or the Coldplay guy getting hit in the nuts over and over again, but in a movie, especially one I actually want to see, I worry it cheapens things.  And if I was the type of guy who wanted cheap, would I be dotting the I in my signature with a dollar sign?  I think not.

Paul opens March 10th, and I don’t want to get my hopes up TOO high, but 2010 was kind of a crappy one for comedy, and I’m hoping 2011 will be better.  I think I deserve that.

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The tragedy of The Switch is that buried deep inside this cheesy rom-com is the kernel of a good idea.  What seems like the ultimate stock rom-com premise — single woman decides to get artificially inseminated, but her quasi-platonic-but-strangely-attractive best friend (Jason Bateman) gets drunk and switches the sperm sample with his own (hey, wasn’t this already the plot of a Jennifer Lopez movie?  that one where she had to clench to keep jizz from spilling out of her vag in the trailer?) — is actually based on a short story by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jeffrey Eugenides, who’s nothing if not offbeat.

As it so often goes in Hollywood, all of the icky weirdness of the Eugenides story (read: the interesting part) has been stripped away, until the only non-painfully formulaic element that remains is Jennifer Aniston’s “insemination party.”  She’s apparently invited all of her friends over to her apartment (including the requisite “kooky best girlfriend”, Juliette Lewis) to drink queeftinis and blow confetti horns while the sperm donor dude she found on Craigslist goes in the bathroom to jack off.  Really, that’s what happens.  Juliette and the girls throw beads and down jello shots and wear tiaras like it’s a Mardi Gras rave party and escort the sperm donor guy to the bathroom to whack it, and when he comes out, they cheer and ask flirty questions like “Well how’d it go in there, big boy!” As if the guy who just had a self-conscious spank sesh in a total stranger’s Crate and Barrel bathroom would be able to share any interesting detail about the experience other than “well now that you mention it, it was kind of hard holding that little cup up to my d*ck while I was in the throes of orgasm. I’ve got a pretty powerful stream, I think a couple of the sperm mighta got concussed, but hopefully the others will beat them to the party, right?”

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I used four question marks in that headline to indicate that blogs have been using speculative, Arrested-Development-movie stories to build their traffic for three years now, and today’s non-news is no different.  (Last we heard, the script was half written. It might happen, it might not.)  But as my father always said, why let some other pantless assh*le in his mom’s basement steal money that could be yours?

Hold the football for me, MTV:

Bateman said he plans to rope Aniston into the “Arrested Development” flick.
“Yeah, actually, there’s a real good part for her in the ‘Arrested Development’ movie,” Bateman told MTV News on Saturday (August 7). Aniston and Bateman have been spending a lot of time together as co-stars in both “The Switch,” a rom-com about a sperm donor mix-up, and the upcoming flick, “Horrible Bosses.”
“There’s no offers on this one. She’s gonna have to sing for her supper,” Bateman said. “I don’t know, we’ll see if she’s available. She’s busy. She’s pretty famous; I don’t know if you’ve heard of her. She’s pretty backed up. Hopefully the guy who’s in charge will like her for that part because I’m going to suggest her.”

I feel bad for reporting such non-news (which Bateman already admitted was just him thinking aloud), which is why I included the trailer for Bateman/Aniston’s The Switch, formerly The Baster.  You’d never guess this script was based on a Jeffrey Eugenides short story and once upon a time made The Black List. At this point I can only assume that the development process just means adding lots of clichés.  Will the platonic best friends finally decide they love each other??  Will the precocious child act hilariously adult-like?? Will glib friends offer sage advice??  Only time will tell!  My favorite part is when Jason Bateman looks down at his wiener in order to communicate that he has an idea, and that the idea involves his wiener.  We never would’ve picked up on that otherwise.

[Trailer also available in non-embeddable form over at Apple]