Being the sixth R-rated comedy of a summer must be a scary place to be. Moreover, as ads make it look like just another body-switching laugher with the stud boy and the dedicated daddy… he can’t change a diaper… he’s forgotten how to pleasure a woman… ha ha ha.

The first line, I believe, of the film, is “Fuck.” It comes out of Jason Bateman’s mouth. He’s the daddy guy. The kids are up in the middle of the night. But dad doesn’t have a super-efficient diaper change and off to sleep. He has the nightmare diaper change of all nightmare diaper changes. And in an instant, you know that this movie has something else on its filthy mind besides a cute body swap with an easy lesson learned.

David Dobkin’s pre-Wedding Crashers directing history – and Fred Claus after – does not draw me to a movie with enormous hope. But he has become a solid, if in-the-box, professional. The screenplay here, by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, is, in many ways, as fresh and unexpected as their script for The Hangover. That idea had a bit more magic in it – I am not saying that this movie is the next coming of Hangover – but this film manages to be a surprise through all the cliches. And sometimes, its as much for the jokes it doesn’t reach for as the ones it does.

The Ryan Reynolds character is also in and out of the pocket. He’s a lady’s man, but he’s got some odd tastes. He’s a boy’s dream of adulthood… but he’s also a failure and a loser in many respects. The pleasure of going with the flow doesn’t necessarily lead him places that others want to go.

The basic set-up has Bateman’s character as a successful attorney on the rise, about to close the deal that will get him his partnership at his firm. We all seen this set-up, right? And the endgame is not going to surprise many people. But how they get there… unexpected.

As the Bateman character’s life has structure, that’s the structure that drives most of the movie. But the script keeps things in balance, often allowing for long runs with one character before a long run with the other.

But the thing you need to know about The Change-Up is that it is epically raunchy. Like all the other R-rated comedies this summer – except for Friends With Benefits, really – this is a HARD R. And aside from crapping in a sink and a penis in the pizza box, I would say that this is the hardest R in the lot. The dialogue has “fuck” challenging “the” and “an” as the most used words. But then there is the sex… which is always something unexpected. (The film also features body doubles for two of the most lusted-after actresses of their era, not to mention some well-done but clearly fake breasts… besides the real fake breasts that are also prominently featured.) This is the kind of movie where men whip out their penises in public… even if you don’t actually ever see the penises when the bodies they are attached to are clear in the frame.)

Bateman and Reynolds are terrific here, though in an odd way, they never get to fully open the throttle. They both have picked up stuff from the other actor when they switch bodies and a lot of it is very focused work. Leslie Mann, on the other hand, gives the performance of her career. Everything you loved about Knocked Up and her other work… better here. And the performance has real range. This woman has real emotions, not just jokes. But when she swings for the fences, she hits it and hits it hard. Olivia Wilde also gets to go for it in this film, playing a woman without a secret, who turns out to be more than a stunning beauty, really for the first time I have seen her do it in the movies. You want to hang out with this person… and then, if you are a boy who likes girls, you really want her to want some sex. Also, in a small role, an almost-unrecognizable Craig Bierko kills it.

I imagine that being a father of a toddler added to my enjoyment of this film. The movie gets the experience of parenting and, in many ways, it is a major theme of the film… the good of it and the bad of it. But I’ve also been a 20-year-old single guy, so I got that too. And I’ve known mothers and hot women in offices, etc, etc, etc. But I’ve never stuck my thumb… well… that would be a spoiler…

I expected very little and had a lot of laughs in this movie. Amazingly, I’ve liked all six of the R-rated summer comedies this summer… even if Horrible Bosses was a extremely uneven, I laughed enough not to want to run for the door. (The two trios in the film, bosses and bossed, muscled it through.) I don’t know how I’d rank them right now (we’ll get to that on the blog soon), but this is probably in the top half of the six. And that’s the most unexpected thing of all.

EMBED- The Change-Up Exclusive Restricted Trailer – Watch more free videos