| Warner Bros. | Release Date: May 10, 1991 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
7
Mixed:
12
Negative:
4
|
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Critic Reviews
Switch plays witty and wise games with every shade of sexuality. [20 May 1991, p.56]
It's thoughtful as well as funny, and you never want to take your eyes off Barkin. [10 May 1991, p.27]
Switch is highly recommended for Barkin's work, which has to be considered on a par with Steve Martin's similar comic turn in All of Me. [10 May 1991, p.C]
Above all, the film suffers from a lack of originality. The premise of Goodbye Charlie was at least something new in 1964, but Switch comes at the end of a long cycle of body-switching comedies that ran out of steam more than two years ago. [10 May 1991]
If Edwards had somehow found a way to really grapple with the implications of his story - if he had pushed to see how far he could go - Switch might have been a truly revolutionary comedy, on the order of Tootsie but more sexually frank. Unfortunately, he seems determined to make everything palatable to the sensibilities of the kinds of people who probably wouldn’t attend this kind of movie in the first place - and, in the process, he takes a daring idea and plays it safe. Too safe.
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Barkin's performance is deranged and wonderful. You won't see anything else like it at the movies for a long, long time -- at least until Edwards returns to the gender-swapping theme. When he does, perhaps he'll make it funnier. [10 May 1991, p.G5]
A strangely mournful, lugubrious film, staggering under a sense of exhaustion that manages to stifle many of its own best laughs. [10 May 1991, p.C]
It's up to Ellen Barkin to carry the movie, and she manages until the thing just becomes a dead weight. [10 May 1991, p.E1]
Barkin's performance is so detailed that it becomes a little essay about the physical differences between men and women. Too bad that this modern woman's performance is trapped in the movie of an old-fashioned man. [10 May 1991, p.6]
Blake Edwards' latest comedy about a man who comes back in a woman's body has some laughs, but it lacks his usual style, wit and humanity. Switch suffers from glitch. [16 May 1991]
Barkin's brilliance can't offset misdirected script for Switch. [11 May 1991, p.C08]
Switch is a movie in search of an ending, much like Edwards' other lesser comedies. It covers an incredible amount of ground without getting anywhere. [10 May 1991, p.6]
Ellen Barkin is an itchy-twitchy stitch in Switch. As a murdered Casanova who comes back to life as a blond bombshell, she's a physical-comedy sensation on par with Steve Martin in All of Me. But that's only 15 minutes of laugh-worthy material. The rest of Switch is a big turnoff. [10 May 1991, p.2D]
The only redeeming thing in Switch is Barkin's vulgar and adept physical performance of a man literally trapped in a woman's body. She's in a constant state of discomfort, whether it's trying to walk in high heels (a sight gag that quickly gets old), scratching her breasts, or sitting with her legs apart in a tight miniskirt. Her presence, however, is a small consolation in a movie that takes the battle of the sexes and turns it into a pointless skirmish.
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