Watch This! The Switch

Okay. When I was trying to come up with things to review for romance month, I watched so many romcoms that my brain started to melt.There were funny movies and there were stupid movies and there were mind-numbingly boring movies. But nothing I watched was quite as blatantly offensive and awkward and The Switch, and that's why I decided to review this one.

So the premise is this: Kassie wants a baby, and decides she's going to go it alone since she doesn't have a husband. She hires Roland, a handsome professor who needs the money, to be her donor. She has a party to celebrate her upcoming pregnancy. He best friend, Wally, who has always secretly liked her, gets drunk at the party and switches his sperm with the donor's. Wacky hijinks! Kassie leaves town, and returns years later with a kid that  reminds Wally a lot of himself.

Oh God, where to begin? This movie is supposed to be comedic, but I found it literally impossible to laugh at most of it. The sperm switch is not just absurd, it's deeply disturbing. Hubby called the incident "rape-y" and he's not wrong. It's kind of equivalent to getting drunk and violating your best friend. It's not forgivable and it's not particularly funny. Pregnancy is one of the most personal experiences a woman can undergo, and to have that experience hijacked is so terrifyingly wrong. The wrongness isn't really addressed, though, because you know, wacky hijinks!

 Then there's the kid. This freaking kid. He's a little adult with loads of neuroses, most of them way more overt than what you would ever see in a real life normal child. One of his quirks is collecting picture frames and making up stories about the people in them, because he feels something is missing because he doesn't know his father's family. That's kind of precious, I guess. He's sweet, but he doesn't seem like a real child to me. The dynamic between the kid and Wally is actually nicely done, but it didn't manage to offset the extreme awkwardness that the original premise left me feeling.

Overall, one of the least funny comedies I've ever seen. It means well, but in the end it comes off as gross and offensive. There are a lot of shoddily addressed implications and not enough chemistry between the main characters to make up for it. Of all of the romcoms in all of the land that you could potentially watch, I recommend staying away from this one.