It’s inevitable that there will be better films, but no filmmaker intends that when they are making a movie. Some observers will find at least the poor acting or screenplay to be a negative factor. There will be many that are a complete blast. Worst case scenario there is for the filmmaker is having a feeling that their story reached one’s anticipation but with the realization that all went down the wrong path for it to come to fruition.
A romantic comedy, that premiered in SXSW Festival, finds television host Ricardo de la Cruz (Cristián de la Fuente) on an annoyingly popular self discovery journey that is very condescending and over the top. In response to his television ratings slipping, Ricardo seeks out a Texas’s soup kitchen run by Cassie Harris (Julieth Restrepo) and company. And while working on it, he is in the middle of a Ponzi case and his funds were seized by the FBI. He becomes a homeless man waiting for any chance of kindly help of Cassie. His experiences raise new feelings in him, and his relations with other poor people in South Texas show him how different this world really is.
By reading the synopsis, you probably can tell what Switch Up is all about, and you would be correct. In many ways, the presentation of the film is an annoyance, underlying the core attributes that give it the essence of a Hallmark film; its cheap, its smooth yet edgy and there’s a plastic feel to it. What separates this film from those type of films is what is glossed beneath the bland appearance. These films are saddled with numerous templates that make them look easy to produce, which they indeed are, nonetheless these movies possess a level of sincerity that is not breath-taking but rather seems unforced and directed perfectly for its numerous fans. Switch Up clearly hopes to achieve the same level of success, using every trick in the book, both pictorial and narrative to make the audience emotional, including sad moments and personality breakdowns.
Switch Up can hardly be described as such; there are not many true, sensibly earned moments in the film. The story envelopes are ridiculous and silly at the best as it beats nearly all film logic in the face and piñata code with a stick. It invites all naysayers to consider that a deliberately deceiving photo is ample material for an indictment from the FBI which would lead to Ricardo becoming homeless with no means to shield himself from the allegations in any case. The whole concept of time in the film is also malleable as it suggests that one moment Ricardo is confined in Texas for a few days and then a montage shows him being confined for a few weeks.
Ricardo’s producer, Marie, is the most senseless of the plot points to me when she discovers the set-up at the beginning then gets kidnapped by Ricardo’s nemesis who says she checked herself into rehab. The movie makes little attempts at being self deprecating humor and instead it cavalierly presents its silliness in a comical light where it sometimes acknowledges how absurd it is. The difference between a poorly executed comedy and a poorly executed romance is also shocking in its magnitude.
It would be mildly amusing if Switch Up was simply an eat the satire gone horribly wrong. But the film doesn’t just cross the line, it enters the domain of the untouchable. In other words, it is deplorable, a constellation of patronising, childish and disgraceful episodes that rely on archetypes that society should have moved on from two decades ago. The film’s most abominable scene comes when Ricardo listens to an unhoused girl who is worried about spending the night sleeping outside because it was so cold the last night. A mother gives her child a plush toy for reassurance and they pray. It is a painfully callous and manipulative scene even on the page. In practice, it is sufficient reason to dismiss the movie as a whole. You can hear the laughter of the filmmakers who treat the ‘unhoused’ sensibly but ignore the fact that it is a satire of the fundamental problem in America today.
(What makes the situation worse is that the film also presents Charley, a character who is homeless and helps Ricardo during his stay as an unhoused man. In his third scene, however, Charley is shown to have a disease that is essentially a ticking time bomb in his time on screen. However you expect Charley to finish, what is shown is even worse.)
Besides the convenience of the plot, there is no real explanation on why Ricardo and Cassie fall in love, movies try to find a spark between the two of them that is not present or even look convincing to begin with. Little do we know that Restrepo and de la Fuentes have very little on the page supporting them and do a lot of heavy lifting. In a less cynical and simpler world, it is not impossible to visualize how two people like these, Ricardo and Cassie could find something in between them that bonds them all together and goes beyond the struggles of their lives creating an awe-inspiring bond. But that is also not what happens; rather, what we catch is stupid plots and barbaric dialogues that just simply demolish whatever little chemistry that the couple at the center is trying to build up.
On every level, Switch Up simply fails. It is disheartening, however, that this is not the issue. The issue is how it leverages positive intent or “means well” as a shield for failure, whether it was intentional or not. There is an inclination to behave surrounding a film that claims to tackle an issue as important as homelessness. But with narrative and tonal clumsiness, and a patronizing, borderline grotesque representation of the crisis that Switch Up offers , the film deserves no such grace. It seems unfathomable that not one person ever at any point in time raised the alarm about this film. One can conclude that such a scenario means a clear cut absence of caring which is very unfortunate.
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