Dale Nauertz’s review published on Letterboxd:
Do you miss the body-switching comedies that became prevalent in the late 1980s? Nope, you don't. Neither did I. Unless you really, really love "Vice Versa", and no one really loves "Vice Versa", you haven't given body switching movies a second thought since at least "Face/Off" (yeah, I would never have thought to mention "Vice Versa" and "Face/Off" in the same paragraph either, but here I am). "The Change-Up" might very well be the best body-switching comedy ever made. Not that this means you should care about it. I certainly didn't. But then I learned a fact about this film that changed everything, and I had to watch it immediately: this movie contains nude footage of Leslie Mann*. I've always thought she was cute, but I never had a burning desire to see what was happening beneath her clothes. But my source told me that she was hiding some real treasures, and Best Buy had the blu-ray on sale for five dollars, so I am now the proud owner of "The Change-Up".
And you know what? I have no regrets.
Movies that try to balance raunchy and heartwarming are difficult to pull off. David Dobkin, the director of "The Change-Up" tried this balance in "The Wedding Crashers" to, I thought, little success. The raunchy moments of "Wedding Crashers" struck me as hilarious (such as any scene involving Vince Vaughn and Isla Fisher) while the allegedly heartwarming elements (any scene involving Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams) fell flat for me. "The Change-Up" works much better because the heartwarming stuff sneaks its way into the raunch, rather than being completely separated from it. Also, "The Change-Up" remains defiantly dedicated to nudity and raunch and edgy jokes for its entire length rather than coming to a screeching halt for moments of unearned sentiment. "The Change-Up" also earns those moments of sentiment with two hilarious performances from Jason Bateman and Deadpool himself, Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds is just as vulgar and rat-a-tat-tat here as he was in "Deadpool", and Bateman brings his usual sardonic straight man routine to the table. Neither of these actors is doing anything new here, but thankfully they don't have to. They don't play one another as well as Travolta and, especially, Nic Cage did in "Face/Off" or even as well as Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan did in "Freaky Friday", but they work well enough and make this a very fun ride. It's consistently hilarious, has a few things to say about domesticity and family without battering the audience over the head with them, and manages to delve deeper than I expected. Granted, I didn't expect any depth here at all, so anything is a bonus. I popped this in hoping for a good laugh and I got a lot of them, and the sentiment didn't irritate me so that worked as well.
Also, this movie has a respectable commitment to nudity which I thoroughly appreciated. Not only is Leslie Mann a very funny actress, but...um...Wow. Judd Apatow is a lucky man. Holy Crap!
*Reviewer's Note: Thanks to IMDB I learned that Leslie Mann used a body double. This is like learning that Santa doesn't exist all over again.