We live in a bold new era of reproductive sciences, yet Hollywood has only begun to take notice of that fact. Most notable was 2008's Baby Mama, which felt less like a standalone film than it did a 90-minute episode of 30 Rock devoted entirely to the Liz Wants a Baby plotline. Coming soon is The Back-Up Plan, in which Jennifer Lopez plays a single gal with an atomic biological clock, who inseminates herself with her best friend's sperm only to meet the man of her dreams and hope he doesn't dump her for being ... too hungry? Finally, we have a project opening this August that until now was referred to as The Baster, but now is called The Switch. Sadly, our suggestion of Vagjacking Kassie has fallen upon deaf ears. In any case, its trailer debuted today. Let's investigate.
Based on a short story by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Switch is the story of Kassie (Jennifer Aniston), a young urban professional who throws a party to get herself inseminated, choosing her athletic friend Roland to provide the gooey duties. (Roland is played by Patrick Wilson, who thankfully seems to have relocated his nuts after having them lopped off in the last trailer we saw him in.) The switch of The Switch happens when Wally, her neurotic, secretly pining friend -- played to hypocondriacal perfection here by Jason Bateman -- drunkenly drops Roland's thoroughbred spooje in a sink, and replaces it with his own. What the trailer suggests is that Wally was too drunk to even remember having done that, thereby softening the whole icky "manseed-smuggling" factor: The full scope of his crimes only dawn on him years later, when brought face-to-face with the manic mini-me his meddling produced.
There's much to like in this trailer. The direction, by the team of Josh Gordon and Will Speck, who previously brought you the Ferrell-as-Lycachek comedy Blades of Glory, is competent. The look is sleek, stripped down to the steelish hues of corporate Manhattan and the woody bars and bistros that provide its release. It also has Jeff Goldblum, always a welcome sight even if he's relegated to the part of the one-liner wingman. Then there is newcomer Thomas Robinson, tasked with inhabiting the young fruit of Bateman's trespassing loins. And thank god that switch was made, as Robinson provides the trailer's single biggest laugh, his line-readings steeped in an earnestness and non-cloying cuteness that recalls a young Jonathan Lipnicki in Jerry Maguire.
Verdict: Stick it in.