Same Same
It’s a body swap movie, but not really a body swap movie and I’ve already forgotten the rest. You will too.
Switch
Director: Ma Dae-yoon • Writer: Ma Dae-yoon
Starring: Kwon Sang-woo, Oh Jung-se, Lee Min-jung, Kim Mi-kyung, Park So-yi, Kim Jun, Lee Seo-hwan, Jung Hyung-suk, Yoo Jae-myung
South Korea • 1hr 52mins
Opens Hong Kong February 2 • IIA
Grade: B-
Show of hands if you’ve heard this one: A screamingly popular, scandal-plagued movie star, Park Kang (Kwon Sang-woo, K-drama Stairway to Heaven), goes out one night after an awards gala – where he won again – for a few drinks and some barbeque with his hard-done by manager, Joe Yoon (Oh Jung-se, Extreme Job). It’s just before Christmas and Joe wants to get home to his wife and kids, but Kang compels him to stick around. He’s alone, after all; a self-involved playboy who chose fame and fortune over his one true love, artist Soo-Hyun (Lee Min-jung, series Once Again). But hoh hoh hoh, now whassis? The destination the magic taxi Joe finally puts him in is to an alternate universe, where Kang is happily married to Soo-hyun and Joe is the superstar he winds up working for. Cue 1) hijinks and 2) Kang’s social, personal and emotional redemption.
There’s not an awful lot more to writer-director Ma Dae-yoon’s Switch | 스위치, a familiar mash-up of A Christmas Carol and any number of body swapping movies you care to think of. It’s got the “opposite ends of the job spectrum” silliness of The Dude in Me (Kang Hyo-jin’s gangster/student swap comedy) and the romantic angle of Prelude to a Kiss, without the terminal illness thread. What Switch really needs is more Face/Off lunacy, but hey. You can’t always get what you want.
You can almost see the vaseline
Switch is Ma’s follow-up to 2017’s My Little Brother, another saccharine comedy-drama about a family/family member that gets dumped in the main characters’ laps. That film had the same redemptive arcs for the three grown siblings who discover their much younger fourth upon their father’s death. The same kind of “hard lessons” are learnt here, but Ma has a firmer grasp on narrative momentum and cohesive storytelling this time around; there’s a clear three act structure that’s obeyed, even if there’s some flab in the middle that could have been trimmed. We expect a sequence with Kang trying his damnedest to convince everyone he’s a famous actor, but the re-dedication to his craft is strung out for too long. Get to the wife and kids, already, and learn your lesson. We know this is inevitable. Make this film 97 minutes.
Pacing snags aside, Ma’s filmmaking is improving, but there’s not much he can do about Switch’s distinct TV movie tone, especially considering the roster of TV vets that have been called to service. The flat yet bright, pedestrian TV-style images don’t help. Establishing shot. Over the shoulder medium shot. Counter shot. Cut. Print it. Repeat. That basic aesthetic suits this kind of harmless, nondescript filler, which leans hard into its high concept and episodic vibe for its fleeting appeal. It really is Kwon’s film, as the forced backstory about an absent father tells us, and he looks the part. But the lack of any real conflict is a sore point. Kang is kind of a dick, but he’s not so horrible that his redemption ever seems out of reach. High concept stories demand heightened behaviours to make them work.
In its inoffensive way, Switch has its moments (what on Earth in this film could possibly demand a IIA is anyone’s guess), a direct result of Oh’s cheeky turn as the superstar version of himself. He doesn’t get nearly as much screen time to ham it up as a K-drama star but he makes what he does get fairly memorable, even when it’s in service of Kang’s growth. It’s no surprise that Lee’s job is mostly to look pretty and guide Kang through his “new” life, and steer him towards the right decisions. Kwon has his moments too, mostly throwaway ones (his reference to his newly discovered son as “Bowl cut” is perfectly underplayed) that might have had more bite in more caustic directorial hands – like Lee Hwan-kyung’s, who balanced snarky, right up to the line quips with the required sweetness in Miracle in Cell No. 7. If ever a film could be viewed on a phone it’s Switch. — DEK