The Oregon Faith Report - Faith News from Oregon

August 24, 2010

Family-Faith Film Review: The Switch
By Catholic Office of Film and Broadcasting

The Switch—Seven years after his unmarried best friend (Jennifer Aniston) conceived a son (Thomas Robinson) by artificial insemination, and left town to raise the boy, a successful but neurotic New York stock trader (Jason Bateman) reconnects with her. Struck by the parallels between his personality and the lad’s, he gradually recollects that, while drunk, he accidentally spilled the intended donor’s (Patrick Wilson) “contribution” down a bathroom sink. Then, in a panic, he substituted his own. The film showcases some of the tangled emotional complications brought about by severing conception from its divinely intended source and setting, the bond of marital love. But co-directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon’s frequently distasteful comedy of modern manners, adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides’ 1996 short story “Baster,” takes as a given of contemporary life its heroine’s right to engineer such a rupture. Lost in the moral confusion are touching scenes of paternal love and a fine comic turn by Jeff Goldblum as Bateman’s perpetually flustered business partner. Benign view of artificial insemination, off-screen masturbation, rear and blurred frontal nudity, much sexual humor, at least one use of the S-word, some crass language. O – morally offensive. (PG-13) 2010

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