i'm on board

The leftovers from the collapse of Miramax are starting to make their way out into the world, one of the first being the romantic-comedy "The Switch" starring Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston and Patrick Wilson. Formerly titled "The Baster," the plot revolves around Wally (Bateman), a man in unrequited love for his female best friend, Cassie (Aniston). She's decided to have a baby via a sperm donor, Roland (Wilson), but, due to a series of drunken mistakes, Wally ends up swapping Roland's sample for his. Seven years later, Cassie returns to New York, with a son in tow who bears a striking resemblance to Wally.

It all sounds fairly unpromising, particularly with Juliette Lewis, who this writer has a more-or-less chemical aversion to, among the cast list. But there's a reason we did put it in our Most Anticipated list for 2010; there's an unusual pedigree to the project, which is based on a short story by "The Virgin Suicides" author Jeffrey Eugenides, and features a script by Allan Loeb ("Things We Lost in the Fire"), and in fact, the trailer doesn't look too bad. Bateman, as ever, is showing off his supernaturally good comic timing, Jeff Goldblum will, as ever, walk away with every scene he's in, and there even looks to be that absolute rarity, a decent performance by a child actor. Directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck ("Blades of Glory") have plenty to overcome still before we buy our tickets (the mid August release date doesn't bode particularly well, and there's something slightly, well, rapey about the premise), but it looks like this could have been much worse.

via The Playlist
(who are a lot more negative about this than i am.)