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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Today in trade news, it sounds like Bat Mitsvah DJ Paul Rudd is finally catching a break.  Good for him, such a nice boy.

Universal Pictures has signed Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann to star in the Untitled Judd Apatow Project.
featuring an original story with characters created by Rudd and Mann in Knocked Up.
Apatow is writing, directing and producing the June 1, 2012 release, produced by Barry Mendel and Clayton Townsend. [ComingSoon]

So basically, a Knocked Up sequel/spinoff focusing on the Paul Rudd/Leslie Mann relationship.  I’m a Judd Apatow nuthugger from way back, so you throw in Paul Rudd to boot, and I’ll be the first one in line for a ticket, all dressed up like a cholo on Easter.  Hopefully there’s even a part in it for Katherine Heigl, as Leslie Mann’s totally-not-shrewish younger sister who drives well and loves math.

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The first time I heard Jim Carrey was starring in a movie called “I Love You Phillip Morris,” I figured, “Phillip Morris?  Why, that movie’s probably about smoking.”  As it turns out, Jim Carrey’s character in the film does love smoking. …PENISES!  HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, get it?  He likes smoking penises?  Seriously though, he’s gay.  Not sure if you caught that.

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I hate that Funny People is 25 minutes too long, because it does a couple of amazing things.  From his album They’re All Gonna Laugh at You through a few years after Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler was a comedy God. I laughed so hard the first time I heard “The Buffoon and the Dean of Admissions” that I farted placenta.  But at some point around ’97, he seems to have decided he didn’t give a sh*t anymore and started doing a string of increasingly sappy, unfunny paycheck abortions like Click and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. The only glimmers of talent came in dramatic roles like Spanglish and Punch Drunk Love, in which he proved he could act, but didn’t really seem like himself, like he was just trying to prove a point.

Funny People not only reminds us what Sandler looks like when he’s doing honest comedy — and by that I mean comedy that he himself finds funny rather than “You want me to do a silly voice again? Fine, I’ll do the a voice again. Lap it up, you pigs.” — but combines it with the Sandler who can act.  Not only that, the story is the kind of pointed, meta-fictional take on his life that JCVD could’ve been for Van Damme if it hadn’t devolved into such a pretentious euro wankfest. I hate to be a reactionary, but while I was writing this I noticed other people calling Funny People Entourage with Cancer, and I felt compelled to point out all the differences between this and Entourage.

1.  Decent writing
2.  Decent acting
3.  Conflict
4.  Likable characters
5.  The celebrity character in Funny People is famous for having an actual skill
6.  The minor characters are trying perfect an actual skill, and aren’t driven by the sole desire to be famous, or to hang out with famous people, or to help the main character get more famous
7.  No one talks about shoes or cars, not even once

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Judd Apatow recently filmed an episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio that airs tonight, in which he shows up looking all clean cut like a 6th grader on picture day while James Lipton is his usual eccentric, sycophantic self.  In this clip, Apatow reveals that the scene in Knocked Up where Katherine Heigl kicks Seth Rogen out of the car on the way to the gynecologist was actually autobiographical.

APATOW: One thing I thought would be fun would be to sort of capture the intensity of some of these moments between couples. And just how heated it gets.  I think at the time I was realizing just how frustrating I was to be around.

LESLIE MANN (Apatow’s wife): I did throw him out of the car on the way to the gynecologist.

APATOW: And that is a complicated moment, because I have no money, and I’m five miles from the gynecologist…

MANN: How did you do that?

APATOW: I took a cab.

MANN:  How did you pay?

APATOW: I blew the guy.

Apatow and Mann go all Abbot and Costello at the end there, but you can tell they were super pissed at each other at the time.  That’s rough.  I’ve never had to hitchhike five miles to the gynecologist, but I have been kicked out of the examination room for making foghorn sounds.  And impersonating a doctor.