An overloaded 'Deadpool & Wolverine'

   I saw Deadpool & Wolverine on a giant IMAX screen, yet I wouldn't call this wild foray into the Marvel Universe a movie. It's more like a variety show featuring a surfeit of Marvel characters, two bantering hosts (Deadpool and Wolverine) and enough chaotic action to barrel through two hours and seven minutes. 

  Director Shawn Levy punctuates the show with profane one-liners, self-conscious swipes at Marvel tropes, playful violations of the illusory fourth wall, and an appearance by Peggy, a mixed-breed dog named as Britain's Ugliest Dog in 2023.

    In short, no one will accuse Deadpool & Wolverine of skimping.

    Ryan Reynolds (as Deadpool) and Hugh Jackman (as Wolverine) headline the show, which does have a plot of sorts. Deadpool and Wolverine join forces to save the multiverse time stream in which Deadpool (aka Wade Wilson) operates --  or some such.

    Do we really care about the outcome? Not much; the movie has less to do with plot than with the collection of sideshows that dominate its superhero circus.

     A second-tier group of villains includes Mr. Paradox (Matthew Macfadyen of Succession fame), Cassandra Nova (Emma Corbin), who happens to be Professor X's evil twin, Lady Deathstrike (Kelly Hu), and Pyro (Aaron Stanford). If these names mean nothing to you, you've either avoided or escaped the MCU web and can stop reading.

     At one point, Deadpool and Wolverine are banished to The Void, which seems to be a place composed of Mad Max outtakes and where characters from various strains of the multiverse mix and mingle. 

     A team of additional Marvel characters eventually joins  Deadpool, whose goal is to earn his place as an important contributor in the Marvel Universe of superheroes. He wants to be part of the Marvel A-team.

    One of the movie's producers,  Reynolds offers a steady stream of Deadpool snark, much of it aimed at Wolverine, whose chiseled torso and bulging biceps suggest an abiding aversion to body fat.

     As for Jackman's performance, let's just say that if there's ever an Oscar for sneers and snarls, challengers should throw in their towels now.

      Nostalgia becomes part of the mix. Wolverine even dons the yellow and blue suit that harkens back to another comic book era. 

      The screenplay makes several references to 20th Century Fox, the studio associated with the X-Men films. Disney acquired Fox and that's mentioned as well, an over-used inside joke that tells us that Marvel fans are supposed to be as familiar with MCU's corporate saga as they are with the characters.

      Need more info? Early on, Deadpool returns to ordinary life, working as a used car salesman. Wolverine's return from the dead receives a humorous gloss. At one point, an army of alternate universe Deadpools appears: A bloated baby Deadpool tops the list of sight gags.

    Known for the Night at the Museum franchise, Levy makes his Marvel debut with a shamelessly raucous addition to the Marvel Universe. It's not worth pointing out instances of fan service in Deadpool & Wolverine; the entire movie qualifies as fan service.

      My bet. Hardcore fans will gorge on this heaping Marvel meal; others might prefer to seek their big-screen nourishment elsewhere.

     

     

He brings quips on his time-travel trip

     Hints of Back to the Future waft through The Adam Project, a story in which a time traveler meets his younger self and tries to spare humanity from the oppressive future in which the movie begins.

     Working from a screenplay credited to four writers,  director Shawn Levy (Free Guy and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian) does his best to freshen a formula that relies heavily on Ryan Reynolds's already established ability to be charmingly snide. 

       The well-received Free Guy (not by me) paves the way for  a  Levy/Reynolds collaboration that lacks the intricate maneuvers of the first movie but probably will please some fans. 

       Me? I’m lukewarm.

     Levy tries to give his movie a satisfying emotional core; i.e., a sentimental conclusion with wholesome messages attached, one strengthened by the presence of Mark Ruffalo as Adam’s father, a physicist who assures his son that he really did love him.

       Forgive the past tense here. Blame time travel.

       A strong cast that also includes Jennifer Garner, Zoe Saldana, and Catherine Keener adds appeal to a movie that employs action and special effects to show Reynolds's Adam Reed stealing a spaceship in 2050, plunging through a worm hole, and landing in 2022, the year in which he was 12. 

    Walker Scobell portrays young Adam, a quick-witted kid who's bullied at school. He may not be furious with his fists but he's seldom at a loss for words, a quality that sets up lots of verbal byplay between the two Adams.

      In 2022, young Adam is ensconced in middle school. He lives with his recently widowed mom (Garner). She’s confused about how to deal with a kid who can't always avoid trouble.  

     So why is the adult Adam racing through time? He wants to find his wife (Saldana) to alter a future in which she will fall prey to an evil corporate titan (Keener) who’s up to no good no matter what period in which she lands.

    Amid the somewhat generic action, Levy delivers bromides  about mother/son love and father/son reconciliation, not to mention the way lovers are destined to find each other in whatever time they live.

     The supporting cast helps elevate the proceedings, which lean heavily on Reynolds's ability to be the cynical guy who eventually learns that a heartfelt statement can be better than a quip. 

      No point, delving into plot mechanics. Know, though, that some of the interchanges between the two Adams are amusing and the movie establishes itself as amiably familiar, which -- I guess -- is better than stunningly awful.

     Or, as the clerk at the DMV shouted to the long line of license seekers, “Next.”

'Free Guy' plays a hollow game

     

    If your idea of fun is watching Ryan Reynolds play a character in a video game for an hour and 55 minutes, Free Guy may seem like an amusing look at a video game character who develops self-awareness. 

    A vaguely interesting question arises: What if said character starts to tire of the routine that makes him part of the scenery instead of a character with agency and clout?

    As for me, I found it difficult to connect with a movie which has been directed by Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) with the ping and pizazz of a game world in which there are average Joes and characters who don glasses that put them into an action-oriented reality that’s visible only to them. Think of it as a form of privilege that allows participation in social mayhem.

    Reynolds plays Guy, an NPC (non-player character) * who follows the same routine every day: He awakens in his bland apartment, puts on the same clothes (blue shirt and slacks), stops for coffee, and heads for his job as a bank teller.

    As part of the game, thugs rob the bank multiple times in a day, forcing Guy and his security guard pal (Lil Rel Howery) to the ground. They nonchalantly react to what has become as routine for them as coffee breaks.

    But Guy feels something's missing from his life, notably a love interest. But what woman would want to fall for an NPC? 

    When Guy sees Molotov Girl (an action-oriented character and major player in the game) he’s love-struck. The script soon contrives to give him a pair of the transforming glasses and, bingo, Guy's in the game.

     He pursues the woman who has stirred his heart — or whatever organ an NPC might have, the one that makes him want to share bubblegum-flavored ice cream with his dream girl.

    Shades of movies such as The Truman Show and Ready Player One waft through Levy’s half-bright movie, which is presented as a kind of romp through weightier questions.

    Outside the game, we meet Keys (Joe Keery) who works for the company that controls the game (it’s called Free City). Taika Waititi plays Antoine, the entrepreneur who stole the game and believes in nothing but maximizing profit.

   Jodie Comer portrays Millie, the designer of the game Antoine stole. She participates in the game through an avatar, a character who happens to be Guy's heartthrob, Molotov Girl.

    If I hadn’t seen Comer’s brilliant work as an assassin in Killing Eve, I probably wouldn’t have given her much thought. Ryan easily handles a character who leaps from nebbish to hero in a movie that allows him to ditch his snide side.

    For non-gamers, the movie may prove mildly confusing, although, for some, simply watching the parade of effects may suffice.

    I  suppose there’s an audience for movies such as Free Guy.

    I found myself longing for the old pinball machines that could be jarred into a “tilt,” which would — of course — end the game in less than the hour and 55 minutes it takes for Free Guy to reach inside its virtual chest and put its artificial heart on its computer-generated sleeve.

*A reader helped educate me about the acronym NPC. I originally called it a non-participatory character. The correct designation is non-player character. The review has been amended to reflect the correction. 

  

Get your snide on with 'Deadpool 2'

Ryan Reynolds proves that he's still got plenty of life as Deadpool.

Deadpool 2 was shown at a preview screening with a caution to critics to avoid spoilers. I'm not sure that anything you could know in advance would ruin the experience of watching Deadpool 2, a sequel to the snidely effective first installment of a Marvel Comics series that seemed perfectly matched to Ryan Reynolds' mocking awareness of comic-book movie tropes.

The movie also made a ton of money.

But about those spoilers. I'll demure by telling you that there are sight gags, a surfeit of action, a sequence in which Deadpool finds himself in prison with a mystery mutant kid (Julian Dennison) who can spew flames from his fists, and more -- much more. Like most comic-book movies, Deadpool 2 subscribes to the more is more school of filmmaking.

The movie also makes room for a bit of pathos in the form of shared feelings of guilt that touch both Deadpool and Cable (Josh Brolin), a cyborg with a bionic arm and a perpetual scowl.

The story includes the amusing addition of some wannabe superheroes who meet with tragic/comic fates and various X-Men who drop in at various points in the story. Why not? Everybody needs a team.

In the hands of director David Leitch (Atomic Blonde), Deadpool 2 devolves into a series of mini-movies that finally are hammered into a more or less unified whole that includes a fakeout about who the movie's real villain might be.

In addition to Reynolds, I enjoyed the work of Zazie Beetz (as Domino) and Stefan Kapicic (as the voice of the strait-laced Colossus). Plenty of other characters careen through the movie, cropping up like kernels of corn bouncing in a popper.

True to form, Deadpool 2 doesn't skimp on one-liners and visual gags, many of them referencing signature moments in other movies: Basic Instinct (yes, that movie again) comes to mind, but there are enough to suggest that viewers bring a scorecard.

The basic trick of the Deadpool movies remains the same: Reynolds delivers a running commentary on the movie's characters and various plot developments, a strategy that can amuse even as it attempts to insulate the movie from criticism. In a way, Deadpool 2 doesn't try to speak to the audience; it is the audience.

That's why Deadpool can be viewed as a big movie for a large but narrowly focused audience, one that's in on the joke, which includes non-stop tongue-in-cheek references that turn the movie into a perpetual wiseass machine. If you don't share the movie's attitudes -- at least for a couple of hours -- Deadpool may seem dumb and pointless: The movie’s smarts are rooted in pop culture and the abundant Marvel Universe.

So, a concluding comment: Leitch and Reynolds have delivered a movie that meets and occasionally exceeds expectations for a second helping but has little to offer those who aren't steeped in Marvel culture.

I chuckled enough to say that Deadpool 2 can be fun and that Reynolds hasn't worn out his welcome as the foul-mouthed superhero who's at his best when he doesn't give a damn about saving the world and who kicks butt while making fun of whatever passes for a story in these comic-book extravaganzas.

Deadpool 2 even tries to add some heart to all its carnage and clangor. Fair enough, but I doubt whether this edition will cause many lumps to form in many throats. But let's be real: No one goes to a Deadpool movie expecting to reach for a hankie.

The bicker, they kill. That's the movie

Medicore Hitman's Bodyguard breaks little new ground.

In The Hitman's Bodyguard, bickering buddies shoot lots of people amid a flood of explosions, car chases and other forms of visual mayhem. There's also ample use of the "MF" word and a mounting pile of action sequences that have been edited to create a feeling of maximum frenzy.

The buddies in question are played by Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, two stars who have branded their big-screen personalities to the point where it's almost impossible for either of them to do anything unexpected.

Reynolds can be smart in the glib way of characters created by snark-capable writers. Jackson does variations on the savvy, profanity-spewing killer who eventually reveals a moral foundation for his seemingly reprehensible actions.

Watching Reynolds and Jackson go through their standard motions provides most of the pleasure in The Hitman's Bodyguard, an action comedy that tries to blast its way through the brick wall of late summer indifference.

The title pretty much tells the story. Reynolds portrays Michael Bryce, a bodyguard whose A-list career shatters when he fails to protect an important client from assassination. Reduced to second-rate protection jobs, Michael basically hangs around waiting for the plot to arrive.

The story kicks in when Jackson's Darius Kincaid turns up. Imprisoned for being a hitman with hundreds of kills, the notorious Kincaid makes a bargain with Interpol. If he testifies against a vicious Belorussian dictator (Gary Oldman), the authorities will release Kinkaid's equally lethal wife (Salma Hayek) from the Amsterdam prison where she's being detained.

At various points throughout, Hayek's Sonia is seen terrorizing her cellmate, exposing her cleavage, and trying to make up for limited screen time by contributing her own carload of profanity to the movie's "R" rating.

Elodie Yung plays Amelia Roussel, an Interpol agent, and Michael's former lover. She promises to help Michael regain his status as a high-priced bodyguard if he'll agree to escort Kincaid from prison to the Hague, where Oldman's character awaits trial for crimes against humanity.

You don't need to be a genius to know that the trip will leave many bodies strewn in its violent wake or that credibility takes an early hit.

After taking a bullet in his knee, Kincaid limps through action sequence after action sequence with the movie stopping for occasional flashbacks to explain how Kincaid met Hayak's character or how Michael developed a relationship with Yung's character.

Director Patrick Hughes (The Expendables 3) seems to buy into to the theory that all action should be edited into fragmented shards, and the incessant banter between Reynolds and Jackson provides little that would make Oscar Wilde envious.

There's not much else to say about this formula job, which never rises above genre mediocrity, but may satisfy those who find this sort of rampant destruction appealing.

More alien dangers from space

Entirely predictable, Life generates tension -- but not much else.

Life arrives in theaters as another Alien clone -- only like most derivative movies, it's not nearly as good as the original.

The best thing about Life may be its depictions of the crew of an international space station floating through extravehicular missions or taking care of daily tasks in the space-station's gravity-free environment. Gliding through the station's narrow corridors looks like it might be fun -- at least for 10 or so minutes.

The story follows a standard alien-on-spacecraft arc. The crew finds carbon-based life in soil samples from Mars -- or something like that. The science officer brings the simple, single-cell creature to life by feeding it glucose. What begins with wonder and awe quickly sours as this simple cellular creature develops into a predatory, octopus-like monster with a face that may remind you of the deep-space monster in Alien.

Once the monster makes its predatory intentions clear, the crew must fight for its life -- and to keep this creature away from Earth. The creature is dubbed Calvin by school children on Earth where the discovery initially is celebrated.

Director Daniel Espinosa ably turns the tension crank as he mixes two marquee names -- Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds -- with a lesser known cast, making Life an ensemble piece in which no single character really stands out. British actor Ariyon Bakari makes a bit of an impression as the station's chief science officer.

Movies such as Life can't really work if we're not repelled by the alien creature's eating habits. The monster's tentacles probe the throats of its victims as it embraces them with a combination of waving tentacles and what appear to be stingray-like wings. Someone describes the creature as a deadly mixture of muscle, brain and eye, which is pretty much what the movie tries to be -- albeit with intermittent success.

Much attention has been given to creating a credible space station, which helps with plausibility. Life offers no wild-eyed futuristic version of space travel, but takes place in the bland near-future.

Don't forget, though, it was the industrial strength cynicism of the original Alien, as well as its hideously vicious creature, that made for such a compelling experience. Life offers tension, but without much of an accompanying vision to elevate it. Gyllenhaal's character voices distaste for life on a conflict-riddled Earth, but that's about it for philosophical musing.

As the story progresses and the fatalities mount, Gyllenhaal's presence increases -- but without creating any special impact. The ship's medical officer (Rebecca Ferguson) also receives more attention.

Terror about making contact with another form of life hardly constitutes a novel story line, and the movie's conclusion proves relatively easy to outguess.

It's possible that Life will turnout to be a placeholder or maybe a warm-up act for Ridley Scott's soon-to-be-released Alien: Covenant. I was hoping for more.

A dirty-talking origins story from Marvel

Deadpool brings us an energetic but cynical superhero.

I've mostly had my fill of Marvel Comics heroes, even when they strike caustic anti-hero poses as is the case in Deadpool. But fairness compels me to add that, at its best, Deadpool is a winking, sharp-eyed entertainment that turns rampant self-awareness into a sustained goof.

I make no claim to understanding fan boy mentality, but I'm betting Deadpool will strike a nerve with comic-book devotees without generating much by way of cross-over interest.

Stocked with enough sex jokes to make Seth Rogen blush, the movie serves up the kind of R-rated material that's bound to keep everyone's inner adolescent happy as it tells the story of Deadpool, a character Ryan Reynolds first played in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).

Reynolds reprises and extends his portrayal of Wade Wilson in an origins story that explains how Wilson became Deadpool, a mutant superhero with a face that looks as if it caught fire and someone tried to put it out with a brick.

So how did Wilson go from being a hunky young man to a superhero so physically repulsive he has to wear a red suit and a mask to cover his body and face.

It's a sad story. After being diagnosed with terminal cancer, Wilson yields to temptation. He agrees to allow a character known as Ajax (Ed Skein) to perform a life-saving procedure on him. It works, but leaves him permanently disfigured.

That's a major problem for Wade, who believes that his girlfriend (Morena Baccarin) most likely will bolt when she gets a look at his defaced kisser.

Reynolds does his best to give Deadpool extra kick as he transforms from a cynical, wiseass mercenary into a cynical, wiseass superhero who's out for vengeance.

At times, Deadpool even speaks directly to the audience, letting us know that his character understands when the movie is doing stupid superhero stuff that threatens to become generic.

Director Tim Miller adds plenty of action, some of it slickly mounted, and includes scenes with X-men: Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Briana Hildebrand) and a hulking creature called Colossus. They try to recruit Deadpool for more noble enterprises than those in which he's accustomed to participating.

A lot of how you react to Deadpool depends on how funny you find it and how taken you are with Miller's approach, underlined from the very start with opening credits that are meant to be taken as a self-referential joke.

I'd put the movie's humor average at about 500, but an excited preview audience probably would disagree with me, and Deadpool surely will score better than Ryan's last foray into the world of comic books, Green Lantern (2011).

With its R rating, snide humor and abundant violence, Deadpool turns its origins story into what looks like an off-the-wall helping of edgy fun. Sometimes, it even is.

'Woman in Gold' fails to mine rich ore

Helen Mirren headlines a story about the quest to recover art looted by the Nazis.

The story of how a persistent woman and her inexperienced young attorney manage to reclaim five Nazi-looted paintings by artist Gustav Klimt suggests a powerful drama dealing with the continuing reverberations of the Holocaust.

Woman in Gold builds its story around one of those paintings, Klimt's 1907 painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. But if Klimt's gold-leafed portrait deserves masterpiece status, the movie about efforts to restore it to its rightful feels like by-the-numbers, Middlebrow fare.

Helen Mirren brings the expected amount of wit and bite to the role of Maria Altmann, one of the few surviving members of a wealthy, cultured Viennese Jewish family.

After the Anschluss, Maria and her husband escaped to the U.S. Most of the rest of Maria's family was killed by the Nazis, who also looted the Altmann art collection, including the portrait of Maria's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer.

Years later, the Austrians have come to regard the Bloch-Bauer portrait as a national treasure. Referred to as "Austria's Mona Lisa," the painting carries a price tag of more than $100 million.

Early on, Maria -- already in her 80s and living in Los Angeles -- hires attorney Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds) to help her retrieve the art, perhaps as a way of keeping her family heritage alive.

The grandson of composer Arnold Schoenberg, Randy predictably resists -- at least initially. Just as predictably, he becomes absorbed by the case, which slowly takes over his life.

Bland to the point of blankness, Reynolds adds little to the proceedings. In another performance that hardly registers, Katie Holmes plays the attorney's wife.

Working from a screenplay by Alexi Kaye Campbell, director Simon Curtis (My Week With Marilyn) adopts an overly familiar structure, juxtaposing action in the present with war-time flashbacks in which Nazis move toward annihilating Vienna's Jewish population.

The best of these flashbacks show the lavish pre-war lives of a well-assimilated Jewish family that sees itself as a part of the city's fabric.

Max Irons portrays Maria's husband, an opera singer, and Allan Corduner appears as Maria's father, a man who can't quite believe that his secure position in Vienna could crumble so quickly.

As Aunt Adele, Antje Traue brings vibrant sophistication to the role of the woman whose portrait is at the movie's heart, and as a young Maria, Tatiana Maslany embodies the tension and fear that's being inflicted upon Jewish families.

Though well-shot, the movie's flashbacks tend to be overused and telegraphed.

An example: To pursue the case, Maria reluctantly agrees to return to Austria. After a meeting with Austrian officials, she tells Schoenberg she wants to walk back to her hotel alone. It almost seems as if she's excusing herself so that she can have another flashback.

Curtis does a reasonably good job of guiding us through the legal tangles surrounding attempts at restitution, battles that involve Austrian committees and art bureaucrats, as well as a 2004 appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court. An Austrian arbitration panel finally brought the case to its conclusion in 2006.

In Vienna, an Austrian journalist (Daniel Bruhl) helps Maria and Randy in their battle, but this character also could have used more fleshing out.

The issues involved in Altmann's story are rich enough: Maria's understandable resistance to setting foot on Austrian soil and unresolved questions about how much Holocaust awareness depends on a vanishing generation of survivors.

Rather than allowing these issues to open up for us, Curtis keeps them encased in a drama in which they don't fully resonate.

Woman in Gold isn't a bad movie, and its story is interesting enough to keep us engaged, but it needed more than dogged competence to give startling new life to the horror and injustice that are so much a part of this tale.

Sifting through the wreckage of 'Safe House'

This action-oriented blur of movie relies on Denzel Washington to hold it together.

A desk-bound CIA rookie comes into contact with some of the agency's more questionable practices. As a result, he begins to understand that the action for which he has been longing comes with a steep price, an acceptance of ethical expediency that can undermine anyone's humanity.

That kind of situation surely would make for an interesting movie. Unfortunately, Safe House -- which focuses on the relationship between a CIA novice (Ryan Reynolds) and a former agent gone rogue (Denzel Washington) -- is not that movie.

Safe House is a jumbled mishmash of action wrapped around a strained plot that's given a bit of extra cache by a strong cast that -- besides Reynolds and Washington -- includes Brendan Gleeson, Vera Farmiga, Ruben Blades, Sam Shepard and Robert Patrick, actors who, for the most part, are present without making a big impression. Most of the supporting cast hangs out in a media-heavy control room at CIA headquarters.

If you find the movie intermittently confusing, blame David Guggenheim's muddle of a script and director Daniel Espinosa's frenzied direction. Bruising car chases and vicious fights are spewed across the screen in fragmented, hand-held chunks that ape the visual incoherence of some of the set pieces in the Bourne movies and which seem to have become the fashion in too many editing suites. (Here's a quick, but helpful FYI: Richard Pearson, who did the editing here, also edited The Bourne Supremacy.)

Reynolds portrays Matt Weston, a CIA agent who’s working in a low-grade post in Cape Town, South Africa. Matt’s life changes when Washington’s Tobin Frost -- a former agent who has wandered way off the reservation -- surrenders at a U.S. consulate. Frost is brought to Weston’s safe house for interrogation sessions, which include water boarding.

As the interrogators ply their morally dubious trade, the safe house is attacked by an unidentified group of invaders, a development that puts Weston and Frost on the run. Weston's supposed to keep Frost safe so that he can be questioned and prevented from doing further harm to the agency and to the U.S. interests its supposed to protect.

The rest of the movie proceeds in an action-oriented blur. Reynolds functions as a kind of straight man to Washington, who delivers another wily performance as a savvy, manipulative sociopath who knows every trick in the book. Why not? He seems to have helped write it.

At one point, Frost overpowers Westen and puts a gun to his head; he spares the young man's life while simultaneously insulting his prowess. Frost says he only kills professionals. It's tough to top Washington when it comes to thee kinds of obvious "power" moments, but I found myself hoping he soon finds a script that's challenging in a totally different way.

The pounding pace of Safe House doesn't allow much time for reflection. That’s a good thing because the action can be as puzzling as it is improbable, all of it undergirded by the predictably cynical notion that the CIA is as devoted to treachery and betrayal as it is to gathering useful intelligence.

Safe House could have benefited from more useful intelligence itself. Instead, the movie coasts on pre-digested attitudes, Washington’s undeniable appeal and lots of punishing action. Before it's done, just about every character in Safe House takes some sort of beating. So, finally, do we.

'The Change-Up' confuses gross and funny

Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds wallow in another raunchy Hollywood comedy.

There's a difference between raunchy and funny, but the new comedy The Change-Up hasn't figured out what it is. That's why The Change-Up opens with a baby spraying a stream of excrement into a frustrated father's face. Yuck and double yuck! **** I suppose there'll be some who happily go along with the movie's shopworn conceit: a married lawyer (Jason Bateman) switches bodies with his reprobate pal (Ryan Reynolds). .... Each man gets a taste of the other's life, and -- here's a surprise -- each becomes a better person because of the swap. The sober married guy discovers that his humdrum life isn't so bad after all, and the single slothful guy learns something about the satisfaction of living up to one's responsibilities. .... Essentially, The Change-Up is one more buddy movie, which means the women serve as props. Looking more fetching than she did in last week's Cowboys & Aliens) Olivia Wilde portrays a hot-looking lawyer with a wild streak. Leslie Mann appears as the wife of Bateman's character. **** Bateman's a capable comic actor, and Reynolds -- last seen in the abysmal Green Lantern -- seems a fine fit for an odd-couple pairing built around the idea that, one way or another, American manhood is a story of failed dreams. But, for what little there is of my money, Bridesmaids was a smarter, raunchy comedy than this silly and extremely distasteful, R-rated mess.