Released Year: 2011
Directed by David Dobkin
Casted by:
Ryan Reynolds as Mitch Planko
Jason Bateman as Dave Lockwood
Leslie Mannas Jamie Lockwood
Olivia Wilde as Sabrina McArdle
Story:
Dave Lockwood is an overworked lawyer and family man who feels his life is horrible, especially compared his friend Mitch Planko Jr.. Mitch is an actor with practically no job and does nothing but get high all day. Mitch has a poor relationship with his father, Mitch Planko Sr., and refuses to go to his father's remarriage, saying that he will "catch the next one."
On the night before his company has a large merger with a Japanese law firm, Dave is reminded by Mitch, who feels they have been drifting apart over the years, that they made plans to go to a bar and watch a baseball game. Because of this, Dave is forced to once again reschedule his "Dialogue Night" with his wife Jamie. While at the bar, Mitch tells Dave of his new, nymphomaniac girlfriend, Tatiana, to which Dave jealously says that he grew up too fast and wishes to experience the care-free life that Mitch has. While drunkenly walking through the park, Mitch, feeling pity for Dave, tells him that he is jealous of the loving family and financially stable job Dave has acquired. Both suddenly needing to urinate, they go in the park's fountain, which has a sculpture of a morose looking woman in it. While urinating into the fountain, they simultaneously wish that they had each other lives. Thunder suddenly crashes and a city-wide blackout occurs, to which they both shrug off as a freak power failure. After they finish urinating and walk back to Mitch's car, the camera pans up to the sculpture of the woman, who is smiling mischievously.
The next morning, Mitch is awoken by one of Dave's babies crying, and is disgusted when he sees Jamie breastfeeding it next to him. At first afraid that he might have slept with her, Mitch calls for Dave, only to notice his reflection and see Dave staring back at him. He rushes over to his house to find Dave in his body. Dave, believing he is dreaming, tries to strangle Mitch, but Mitch finally convinces him that he is awake. Dave asks who wished for them to have each others' lives and Mitch remembers the wish they made the night before. They both drive back to the park, planning to urinate again in the fountain and wish for their old lives back. However, when they arrive, they find that has been removed for restorations. They try to find it, but it is not currently in the District Manager's computers, and they are forced to wait a day until the I.T. expert returns to work. Unable to think of anything else, they both agree to pretend to be each other for the day.
When Mitch arrives to Dave's law firm (dressed in a highly non-work appropriate pink shirt and blue jacket), he meets Dave's attractive assistant Sabrina McArdle, who ushers him to the merger meeting. There, he makes a fool of himself by speaking out of turn, not answering basic law-knowledge questions and finally insulting the Japanese representatives' ethnicity. Angered by his antics, the merger falls apart and the Japanese representatives threaten taking Dave's law firm to court for racism. Mitch manages to convince Dave's boss, Flemming Steel, that ruining the merger was all part of his "master plan" to make even more money for the firm. During this, Dave goes to Mitch's film shoot and realizes that he is at the set of a "lorno", or light porno (i.e. porn where breasts are shown but no actual sex happens). He attempts to back out of it, but is forced to continue by the film's director, Valtan, who threatens to murder him and make it look like an accident if he does not finish the scene. Mitch then goes to Dave's daughter, Cara's, ballet rehearsal and sees another girl knock her to the floor. Despite Dave and Jamie having always told Cara to solve her problems verbally, Mitch instructs her to "fuck verbal resolution. [And for her to] put that whore on her back and shank her." Later that night, Dave and Mitch meet back up at a restaurant and Mitch tells an exasperated Dave that he ruined the merger before Dave scolds him for not telling him that his role was in a porn film.
Tired of pretending to be Mitch, Dave has them go back to his house to tell Jamie the truth. However, she does not believe them due to Mitch being the only one of the two that knows their anniversary date and Jamie's favorite color. When Dave tries to convince her by relating the tale of how she accidentally singed of some of her pubic hair with her vibrator while she was in tub, she instead slaps them and scolds "Dave" for telling Mitch the story. Dave decides to return to Mitch's house, not worried if he has sex with Jamie as he remembers Mitch telling him that Tuesday is the night Tatiana comes over. At dinner, Mitch, uninterested in anything but eating, callously says that Cara's school poem which she was upset did not get put up on the board, was not good enough to merit such. When Jamie angrily tells him to sing the "Dinner Song" he makes up a short song about food before leaving the dinner table, taking a majority of the food with him. Later, when Tatiana comes to Mitch's house, Dave suddenly becomes guilty that he is cheating on Jamie, but Mitch reassures him that it is not cheating as long as it is with Mitch's body. Dave gets ready to have sex with Tatiana, but becomes immediately disgusted when she reveals herself to be nine months pregnant. While he tries to get her to stay for Mitch's sake, he cannot get over his repulsion, and she angrily storms out. Back at Dave's, Mitch excitedly prepares to have sex with Jamie, only to be as equally disgusted as Dave was with Tatiana when she loudly defecates with the bathroom door open. When she gets into bed with him, he quickly tells her to turn her front side towards him and that he is not attracted to her. She goes to bed sad, angry and confused. When the babies begin crying in the middle of the night, Mitch is kicked out of bed by Jamie and told to feed them. He calls Dave for help, and is angry to hear that he lost Tatiana. Dave attempts to explain how to feed them, but Mitch barely hears as he keeps trying to stop the babies from hurting themselves and him. He exasperatedly puts them both in the sink and pours milk on their heads as punishment.
The next day, Dave goes to the District Manager's office to try to find the fountain only to be told by the I.T. expert, Vincent, that he has to wait 3 days to 3 weeks to wait for his claim to be approved by the city. He goes to his house to tell Mitch, but instead finds Jamie, who morosely tells him that "Dave" is in the shower. He asks her if something is wrong and she tearfully tells him that Dave has been acting strangely. Dave at first thinking it is just Mitch, she goes on to tell him that Dave has been acting this way years. He always did everything he could to be happy in life, not realizing that by taking on so much responsibility he was actually making himself unhappy. She asks him if he thinks Dave is having an affair to which he hesitantly says no. She says that if he does not start being happy more often, she will have to divorce him. Mitch then ruins the mood and further disturbs Jamie by running into the room naked, having just shaved Dave's pubic hair. After Jamie leaves the room, Dave tells Mitch how long they have to wait until they can find the fountain, and Mitch proclaims that he is not pretending to be Dave that long and says that he is going to go back to his house and wait until they find the fountain. Dave, refusing to let Mitch ruin his family, pins him to the wall and tells him that is going to stick it through. Mitch says that he does not know how to act like an adult and Dave teaches him how he must behave in order to be accepted. When they get to Dave's firm, Mitch sets up Sabrina and Dave on a date, mainly so that he can be the one having sex with her once they get their old bodies back.
After Dave leaves, Mitch receives a phone call from his father who wants to speak to Dave. He meets his father at a restaurant where he reveals that even though he told Mitch that his fiancee wants him to speak at the wedding, it is actually him that wants Mitch to speak. Mitch, who always thought his father hated him, asks why he wants him to speak, and he tells Mitch that he has always somewhat respected him. He then, however, says that Mitch has done practically nothing with his life and quits nearly everything he attempts. Mitch walks away telling his father that Mitch is going to soon prove that he is a "fucking Jedi." He then becomes extremely strong willed and dedicated in doing everything Dave's life demands, from taking care of the kids and buying groceries to making decisions at the firm (though he does all this in a hyperactive, childish way). On the night of Cara's ballet recital, she is about to be pushed by the other girl again, but takes Mitch's advice and throws her to floor, to which Mitch foul-mouthedly cheers. Cara tells her father she loves him and Mitch says the same thing, but feels guilty for doing so immediately after. That night, he and Jamie begin to have sex, but he angrily finds that his guilt will not allow him to become erect, and he admits that he is not cut out for the responsibilities of an adult. Jamie comforts him, and he discreetly rests his head on her breasts.
The next day, Dave decides to take advantage of being Mitch and takes the day off. He does everything that he finds relaxing, including going to an Aquarium and watching a showing of National Lampoon's Animal House at the theater. After he finishes having fun, he calls Mitch to help show him how to act fun on his date with Sabrina that night. Mitch teaches Dave how to act like him, and finally shaves off Dave's pubic hair. Sabrina comes to meet him at a classy restaurant and, despite only originally going because Mitch told her to, they eventually legitimately start liking each other, and get tattoos. Dave walks her home, and she tells him to call her.
Later, Jamie asks "Dave" about their anniversary party and he asks why Mitch was not invited. She says that he told her not to invite him because he was afraid Mitch would ruin it with his usual antics. Meanwhile, Dave is rollerblading through the park when he is called by the woman from the District Manager's office and tells him that they found where the statue was moved to. Dave goes to meet Mitch and tell him, but when he gets there, they both imply that they want to stay each other and Dave leaves. However, Mitch forgets about the Dialogue Night he and Jamie had planned and accidentally stands her up.
The following day, Mitch goes with the rest of the representatives to the new merger meeting between the two firms. The Japanese representatives only offer $625 million dollars to merge, $75 million short of their hoped for $700 million. They are about to agree when Mitch says that he has noticed the firm's representatives have not started leaving, which means they are still willing to up the price. He tells the moderator to tell the firm they demand $725 million and has Dave's firm's representatives begin to leave. They successfully scare the other firm into agreeing and celebrate. Mitch and Dave's family go to a gala being held by Dave's firm in honor of Dave being made partner, but Jamie is still upset over how she knows Dave will still never truly be happy. Meanwhile, Dave and Sabrina are at a baseball game when a thunderstorm suddenly hits, and they decide to go to Mitch's house to wait it out. Sabrina tells Dave that she is going to have sex with him, but when they begin, he notices a tattoo of a many spotted skipperling on her thigh, the same type of butterfly his daughter said was her favorite, and regretfully leaves, saying he wants to go home. Back at the gala, Steel is giving a speech about the amazing accomplishments Dave made over the years, and how the only thing he loves more than the law is his family. Mitch says to himself that he did not earn the title he is getting, as Dave quickly drives up to the gala, rushes in, and kisses Jamie, finally letting her know that he is who he said he was. He tells her that he loves her, and he and Mitch drive to the Peachtree Galleria, where the fountain was moved. They run in, planning to urinate in the fountain, but find it located in the center of the Galleria, where it is surrounded by hoards of people walking by. They decide to not wait and do it then, but Mitch finds that he is too embarrassed to urinate, especially after the crowd notices Dave doing so. Mitch asks why Dave did not invite him to his anniversary party, and Dave admits that he was embarrassed of him, but has grown to respect him while he was in his body. This allows Mitch to relax enough to be able to urinate. They try wishing for old lives back, but it does not work. Security begins to come to arrest them, but on the third try the Galleria's lights go out, and they both run away before they turn back on. The confused crowd looks around, and the camera pans up to the face of the statue, once again smiling.
That night, Dave is awoken by his babies crying, thrilled to realize that he is back in his own body. He continually kisses Jamie and happily goes to change the babies. Back at Mitch's home, he awakens to enthusiastically admire himself and happily get breakfast with Sabrina, not realizing that the tattoo Dave got is a picture of his face on Mitch's back with the caption "I ♥ Dave." Mitch goes and speaks at his father's wedding, then a month later at Dave's anniversary.
In a post credits scene, Dave and Jamie get high then go to the Aquarium Dave went to earlier, Mitch and Sabrina have sex for the first time, and Mitch sends Dave the lorno film he starred in.
L² Scored: 8/10
L² Comment:
This is a funny movie by Bateman & Reynolds. I think both of them look good and they are great in the acting as well. Storyline is a bit predictable, but well ~ its a nice comedy and its fun to watch with. Though some part is kinda lame and boring, but overall it is still funny and able to make me laugh :)
