Brief Story Line
Bill Walker (Ed Helms - Ron's Gone Wrong, Tag etc) and his wife Jess (Jennifer Garner - The Adam Project, Peppermint etc) used to be very close with their children CC (Emma Myers - Wednesday TV series etc) & Wyatt (Brady Noon - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem etc). But they seemed to grew apart as the children reached their teenage years. Three days before Christmas, Jess decided to go to the Planetarium for once in a lifetime occurrence with the whole family, including baby Miles and the dog Pickles.
However, after their encounter with Angelica (Rita Moreno - Fast X, Slums of Beverly Hills etc), something happened to the Walkers on that night which turned their lives upside down as they had to face their biggest fear of living the other person's life. And it certainly did not help with every one's personal life changing moment then.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well that was fun. I already knew that this was going to be simple story with familiar premise. After all, body switch had been shown many times before with one particular title of Freaky Friday as my personal favorite. However, despite seemingly more at stakes, the movie really felt light and had a strong feel that it was aimed for children with its simplicity of problem resolving (I realized after finishing it that the film has 7+ rating).
Anyway, the movie actually had few quite hilarious scenes usually involving the baby and the dog, and I thought Ed Helms provided a bit of comical moments which was his common trait. There was one very funny remarks he made during the conversation with the whole family on the morning before that major event that made me burst with laughter. And during the whole movie, we got to see some humorous scenes due to the situation they were in. However, the jokes here might not be to everyone's liking, but I personally like them. For this kind of film, we already knew what the outcome would be, so the journey would have been the main attraction. Even though there were a lot of cheesy moments, but in general I was quite entertained by it.
The film had a duration of 1 hour 45 minutes which included very long closing credits. It has some gag reels for the first few minutes that you could enjoy, accompanied by nice Christmas songs. I also noticed that the movie was based on "Bedtime for Mommy" written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal which after reading on the internet, it was a children's book. So no wonder it has a strong kid-friendly vibe. The movie was directed by - to my surprise - McG whose prior experience usually action or action comedy like Charlie's Angels, The Babysitter, Terminator Salvation etc. He seemed to enjoy his work here, but there was one scene during the soccer game that showed lack of research. Oh and Jennifer Garner also served as one of the producers (similar to her role in Yes Day).
Aside from the names above, there were quite a lot of additional support cast. But the ones that I was familiar with were only Matthias Schweighöfer (Army of Thieves etc) as the neighbor Rolf, Fortune Feimster (Fubar TV series etc) as coach Kim, Cyrus Arnold (Run Hide Fight etc) as the bully Hunter Drew and Bashir Salahuddin (Top Gun: Maverick etc) as Mr. Molson. The main cast to me did their job adequately. Their chemistry was quite nice, although there was one scene that I thought was a bit improper during the book club meeting, but in general it was still OK.
Overall this was a light comedy movie adapted from children's book that should please the younger audience with its humor and story. The Christmas setting and the many lovely songs really set the mood and brought joy. Even though its quality is pale in comparison to other beautiful Christmas film or other body switch movies, but the fun feeling was a plus point for me. So if you like film with such attributes, then I am quite sure you would enjoy this one. But if critics views is important for you, then you might not like this.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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