There comes a time, in just about any modern family, when the youngest member of the household is old enough to warrant the commencement of “movie night”. About midway through the pandemic, when our daughter’s tastes graduated from Australian mermaid dramas to more palatable fare like The Baby-Sitters Club and Gilmore Girls, my husband and I celebrated by screening Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock films for our kids, who loved them as much as we did! But then the world opened back up, and personal preferences splintered off. Our son now likes watching football games, and football dramas, and while I can stand the latter, it’s hard to imagine subjecting his little sister to Friday Night Lights’ tequila shots and threesomes. Besides, she’d much rather hide away in her room and watch some Netflix show about cake.
That same streamer’s Family Switch, out in time for the holidays, is an arrow that was unapologetically calibrated to hit straight at the heart of the multi-gen-viewing dilemma. Directed by McG and starring Jennifer Garner (who also produced, and is as plucky and puckered as ever), the yuletide drama takes a more-the-merrier approach to the trading-places trope, offering a smorgasbord of stock characters for couch-bound viewers to relate to: the Walker family has something for everyone – Sporty, Techy, Wistful and Work-Obsessed. And like so many family units who are no longer living in lockdown, the once tight-knit household is unraveling, everyone drifting off into their own private directions. Might some old-fashioned living in other people’s shoes be the portal back to together time?
While body-swap classic Freaky Friday featured a mother and daughter who switch bodies, and films like Big and 13 Going on 30 centered on a single kid who suddenly inhabits their future self, Family Switch goes triple threat. In the blink of a once-in-a-lifetime planetary alignment, Jess (Garner) and her teenage daughter CC (a radiant Emma Myers) trade places, as do Bill (a befuddled-looking Ed Helms) and teenage son Wyatt (Brady Moon). Oh – and so do the baby and the family dog, Pickles. (The latter role reversal is the most novel, with shots of a bulldog toddling around on two hind legs and relieving himself on a potty.) Unfortunately, the potty humor is a loud leitmotif. There are plenty of shots of the dog urinating under the Christmas tree, as well as a close-up of a colonoscopy souvenir photo, and a recurring joke that involves Jess snarfing down ice cream and then furiously farting. Another running bit involving a German dog trainer did not get my tail wagging. Occasional flecks of with-it-ness emerge in the form of jokes about “intimacy doulas” and Maroon 5.
Purportedly based on an illustrated children’s book called Bedtime for Mommy by Amy Krause Rosenthal, the project is one of Netflix’s recent string of star-studded holiday movies that are glossier than their Hallmark Channel brethren. This one is set in Los Angeles, which must have been convenient for the cast and crew, but the eternal sunshine and rows of palm trees don’t do much to add to the toasty vibe that is the specialty of the cheesy yuletide genre. But this is also a supernatural genre story, one with a twinkly-eyed fortune teller (Rita Moreno), cosmic glitches and discoveries about the mysteries of one another’s bodies (OMG I have a tattoo/gross nipple hair, etc).
The team of writers who worked on the script have packed the plot with a head-spinning number of coincidences. As it happens, each member of the Walker family has a high-stakes agenda item on the day of the body swap. A scout for the national team is coming to star player CC’s soccer game; Wyatt has a Yale interview; high-school music teacher Dad, who gave up his rock-star dreams long ago, might get a shot at playing on national television; while Jess has a huge presentation at work and her promotion to partner is riding on it. It’s a setup for a handful of clever-ish bits grounded in characters having no idea what to do in each other’s circumstances. You try impressing a Yale admissions committee in 2023. And it’s hard to slay at soccer if you forget you can’t use your hands!
No doubt, countless households will give this Cringe-mas comedy a shot over their winter breaks. Hearts will be lukewarmed, and perhaps families will come together as newly minted McG fans, but with a renewed appreciation for their individual passions. And maybe if any of them are aspiring film-makers, they’ll think twice before stuffing every gimmick imaginable into a single feature. Even algorithm king Sam Altman once said: “It’s better to have a few users love your product than for a lot of users to sort of like it.”
Family Switch is available on Netflix on 30 November
