The premise is fairly familiar - parents switch bodies with their children, and the structure is exactly what you would expect it to be, but what separates it from the films it references such as Big, 17 Again, Freaky Friday, and 13 Going on 30 (also starring Jennifer Garner) is that they gave room to let its characters breathe and apply a degree of verisimilitude to buy into the concept and the conflict. Right from the start, it appears that the people who worked on this had the mindset of either to go big or to go home, as a lot of it is fairly over-the-top, and comes across desperate to get a laugh from the viewer. The humor has its moments of attempted cleverness, but there is a lot of lowbrow comedy that diminishes the efforts to be smart. What doesn't work in the favor of the picture, is that the premise is presented three times in the story, and because the pace of it is very fast, and they're constantly trying to go for big laughs, there is not a clear enough focus and not enough time to invest in the relationships and conflict. I have not read the story this is based off of, so I cannot judge it as an adaptation, as a motion picture though I would have to describe this as being average at best, I probably would have rated it lower had it been released in theatres and I had to pay more than I do for Netflix monthly to watch it.
Review of Family Switch
