The Switch

The Switch, formerly titled The Baster, is a romantic comedy-drama film starring Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman.The film is based on the short story "Baster" by Jeffrey Eugenides. An unmarried 40-year-old woman - Kassie Singleton (Jennifer Aniston) decides she wants to have a baby- turns to a turkey baster in order to become pregnant. Despite the objections of her neurotic best friend Wally (Jason Bateman), she chooses to do it alone, with the services of handsome and charming sperm donor Roland (Patrick Wilson). Wally has always had feelings for Kassie, but as his friend (Jeff Goldblum) points out, he missed his chance and she put him in the "friend zone".But things don't go to plan, as Wally gets so drunk at Kassie's "insemination party" that he accidentally spills Roland's semen and replaces it with his own. Seven years later, Kassie returns to New York along with precocious-but-neurotic son Sebastian (Thomas Robinson). Wally forms a bond with this loveable mini-version of himself, but the bad news is that Roland is in the picture too. It's a by-the-numbers movie, but the dots that get connected feel new. Aniston, playing a forward-thinking lonely girl, is at her most sexy and charming.The Switch is more Jason Bateman's movie than Aniston's, and he makes the most of what might have been a stock role. He plays Wally, the frowningly downbeat, way too sincere friend of Kassie (Aniston) — whom, of course, he's secretly in love with. The Switch squeezes fresh laughs out of what is, in essence, a rather startlingly post-Freudian, nature-trumps-nurture view of child development. Wally and Sebastian make a very funny and touchingly well-matched pair of saturnine brainiacs, with goggle-eyed Thomas Robinson playing Sebastian as a chip off the old grouch.The romantic-triangle plot, however, is standard issue: Wilson, looking more than ever like Paul Newman, does his jerk-lite variations, and Bateman winds his way toward the big moment when he declares his feelings to Aniston.The film could have used sharper scenes between Aniston and Bateman. The model here is too Woody Allen-ish, with Wally's neuroses and kvetching dominating their scenes without any real romantic spark. A romantic comedy needs at least some romance between its leads.There is more warmth between Wally and Kassie because of her motherhood and Wally's increasing interest in her son. And the ways the film finds to contrast father and son.Despite a virtually unplayable premise, "The Switch" overcomes this handicap to turn itself into a friendly, offbeat romantic comedy.