Unfunny and foul: 'Change-up' your plans before seeing this
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The Change-UpPublicity photo
The Change-Up is one of the dirtiest-minded mainstream releases in history. It has a low opinion of men, a lower opinion of women, and the lowest opinion of the intelligence of its audience. It is obscene, foul-mouthed, scatological, creepy and perverted. As a bonus, it has the shabbiest low-rent main titles I've seen this side of YouTube.
It is a body switch comedy. You remember those. There must have been dozens. Through some sort of magic, two characters find themselves occupying each other's bodies, or their own bodies at different ages. This can be charming, as when Tom Hanks did it in Big or Jodie Foster in Freaky Friday. And remember Francis Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married, with Kathleen Turner becoming herself as a teenager.
To mention such movies in connection with this one is a sacrilege. Setting aside considerations of the story, The Change-Up sets out to violate and transgress as many standards of civilized conduct as it can. Don't get me wrong. Faithful readers know I treasure cheerful vulgarity. But readers, I've seen The Hangover, and this is no Hangover. Full review.
7 comments
" It has a low opinion of men, a lower opinion of women, and the lowest opinion of the intelligence of its audience. It is obscene, foul-mouthed, scatological, creepy and perverted."
Sounds like a porn movie. A must see.
It's only going to get worse as the years go on. There doesn't seem to be a Holy-weird "comedy" that comes out anymore that *doesn't* involve: 1) Scatalogical humor, and especially involving females. Somehow females farting, sharting, and getting shit and sharted on is the new norm; 2) the accidental hurting of babies and kids, 3) the accidental maiming and outright killing of animals; 4) Nasty degrading kind of sex, especially where bodily functions get intertwined with the sex act itself. 5) Really crude situations in general, just total lack of innocence. (Case in point - look up the trailer for "The Sitter," starring Jonah Hill, which is apparently a remake of 1987's "Adventures in Babysitting" to see another good example. In the trailer the little girl accidentally "sharts" in the car, and all manner of violence, vulgarity and crudeness ensue for 2 1/2 minutes. Give me 87's AIB anyday over that shite.)
If anybody's been paying attention, they've been pushing the envelope further and further with every year. It's funny that in only two years time, "The Hangover," which in itself was one of the "pushing the envelope" agenda movies is now being held up by Roger Ebert as some funnier, better, classier version of whatever's out right now. Just means that in about another two years' time "The Change Up" will be considered a comedy masterpiece in our Idiocracy world, meanwhile, as the bar gets lowered even further to who knows how far down.
Getting down off my soap box now.........................!
Why is it that whoever writes these scripts has not advanced beyond the early adolescence stage of boys gym locker room humor?
I'll stick to all the oldies and classics available on Netflix, thank you very much.
I do not consider myself a prude at all-I am of the generation that feasted on Allen Ginsberg's poetry. But this stuff nowadays is just plain STUPID!
The makers and writers of this garbarge are the same ones who promote "prosti-tots"............
"whorelywood"
Usually I think there's a lot of excessive online whining and complaining on this site. However, in this instance I'm fully prepared to get in on the carping. Hollywood started to make me feel like a grumpy old man before I was even old enough to drink. I really noticed the lack of comedy writing when Dumb and Dumber came out, and it's just gotten worse and worse. A little absurdism and witty dialogue would be a breath of fresh air, instead we just get poo and humiliation.
Recently I watched "Along Came Polly" for free on the 'net, starring Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston, and even though Stiller's presense kind of made me leary of what could be in store I thought, well, Jennifer Aniston's in it, she's kind of cool, right? She wouldn't be in a movie that was *too* stupid or low brow......right?!?! Wrong. Toilet humor dominates that movie. They actually made Ben Stiller's character have Irritable Bowel Syndrome in order to have the excuse for endless toilet humor. There was also Alec Baldwin using a urinal and farting at the same time with the focus shot on his butt as he adjusted his stance to squeeze the fart out, and then Philip Seymour Hoffman of all people got to have a "sharting" scene. I was surprised to see PSH slumming it in a movie like that. Then of course there was the requisite animal injury "hilarity" involving a half blind ferret that's always running around smashing himself into things. Oh, that's just so funny. Probably just as funny as the trailer for "Paul Blart, Mall Cop" that depicted a little dog getting run over - and presumably killed - by a Segueway. But then you gotta love "The Hangover" and how it shows an infant getting conked in the head by a car door then letting out a painful wail, which ties for the way that "Hangover 2" has a running joke about another baby's "weenis," and where the guys take his balled up baby fist and move it up and down near his crotch, simulating him jacking his own weenis.
In Mike Judge's movie "Idiocracy," which takes place 500 years in the future, humanity has devolved so much that by that point, people's idea of a great movie is watching two hours of nothing but a butt farting. That's it. Just a butt on the screen, making farting noises, as the audience rolls with laughter. (There's also a TV show that everybody loves called "Ow! My Balls!" where it's endless ways that this one guy gets his balls injured. That's it, that's the entire show.) The lead character, played by Luke Wilson, is from the present time period and was supposed to be a guy of completely average intelligence that has been in an accidental state of suspended animation for 500 years, finding himself resurrected in this future world where now suddenly....................he's considered the smartest man on the planet, because everybody else has just become *that* stupid.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to take humanity 500 years to get there.
(and have to add that I'm not like this totally dour and humorless person, cause I'm actually the kind of person that can't take anything too seriously, but I just roll my eyes at the endless low brow toilet humor in pretty much every "comedy" going on nowadays, and don't think it's funny to see animals or babies and kids getting hurt or killed. I actually laughed out loud about the whole "Ow! My Balls!" idea in "Idiocracy" because it was just so stupid and funny. Anyway.....)