In Family Switch, the Walkers are a busy family with many hobbies and interests taking up their time. As a result, they have become somewhat disconnected, as each member is preoccupied with their own lives.
But with the holiday season coming up, mother Jess wants everyone to put some time aside to make a few Christmas memories. She has a family day out lined up at the planetarium, and she wants it to be fun.
However shortly into their visit, things don’t go to plan. Jess starts to have a disagreement with her daughter CC about her future plans, while husband Bill has a similar disagreement with son Wyatt.
Before the discussions can go any further, the Walkers are interrupted by a stranger who offers to take a family photo. They stop for a moment to pose for the picture in front of the planetarium’s telescope, which is accompanied by an unusual flash, and then the Walkers return home.
The next morning when they wake up, the family discover something shocking. Jess has swapped bodies with CC, Bill has swapped with Wyatt, and the baby of the household has swapped his body with the pet dog.
Is this body swap a result of some cosmic alignment which occurred when the Walker family stood in front of the telescope, and if so, can they reverse it? This is something the family will have to figure out while they get used to the idea of living in each other’s shoes.
Directed by McG and starring Jennifer Garner, Ed Helms, Emma Myers, Brady Noon, and Rita Moreno, Family Switch is a body swap comedy set at Christmas. The film – which is based on the book Bedtime for Mommy by Amy Krouse Rosenthal – is new to stream on Netflix from today and is a riff on previous body swap movies, including most notably Freaky Friday.
Because Family Switch follows the same general premise of this movie, as well as the many, many body swap stories that already exist, it treads a very well-worn path. If you’ve seen other movies of this ilk then you’ve kind of seen this film too, and it doesn’t offer a great deal of originality.
The Christmas setting is also very lazily dropped into this picture, almost as though it has been shoehorned in as an afterthought. The cynic in me would suggest the Christmas angle is here because the movie is debuting on Netflix ahead of the festive season, and without this bit of scheduling it wouldn’t be a holiday film at all.
However, if neither of these things bother you all that much, then there is a bit of fun to be had in Family Switch. There are a few laughs, there is the occasional heartfelt moment, and it is perfectly watchable.
But the emphasis here does have to be put on the words “bit of fun”. There are parts of Family Switchwhich are OK, and some may find this perfectly acceptable, but this is not exceptional stuff, and despite some chuckles this movie is in no way a laugh riot.
Family Switch’s greatest asset is its central cast led by Garner, Helms, Myers, and Noon. All four do a good job of selling the body swap premise, and this is where the movie works best.
Garner is no stranger to playing a teen in an adult body, having previously done this in the 2004 fantasy comedy, 13 Going on 30, and it’s the same sort of thing again. She was great in that movie, she does a similar job here, it works well, enough said.
The chemistry between Garner and the other three actors is strong and it does help the movie out greatly. Even when Family Switch shows signs of sagging and buckling under its own paper-thin story, this quartet carries the picture.
As for the rest of the film, it’s really only so-so at best. It’s clear everyone involved is trying, but the material is mid-level and not much more.
The cast elevate the status of the picture and stop it from being a low budget affair, but they can only do so much. Without them, Family Switch would be less appealing and even more disposable than it is, and this is not particularly encouraging.
What is perhaps most surprising about Family Switch is that this is a McG film. This is surprising because the movie feels far more constrained than some of McG’s usual work (Charlie’s Angels, The Babysitter, etc), and this alone seems odd.
When you think of McG, you think of something which is a touch more elaborate, stylised, or generally over-the-top. This simply isn’t the case with Family Switch, and if McG’s name wasn’t on the credits I would not believe this was a McG movie.
Well, maybe it feels like a McG movie in the brief scenes where the baby swaps bodies with the dog, but that’s about it. However, the less said about the baby/dog ‘gag’ the better.
This aspect of the film utilises a bit of CGI to get the dog walking like a human, and the baby acting like an animal, and it’s just plain bad. Other than the desire to get a cheap laugh out of this switcheroo, this element of the movie is cringeworthy and should simply have been abandoned.
To reiterate what I said earlier, there is a bit of fun in Family Switch and it is perfectly fine as a middle of the road comedy, but don’t expect anything more. If it was shorter, snappier, and generally more fun, then I’d be far more invested and positive about the picture, but as it stands, it’s very forgettable.
Family Switch isn’t awful, but like so much of Netflix’s content it is far less than the sum of its parts. I feel like a broken record here, because I’ve said it many times before, but too many Netflix movies are undercooked and this is yet another example.
Family Switch is a one-time watch. It may help pass the time for a couple of hours, and Garner and Co. help greatly, but no one is returning to this film once the credits roll.
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