Family Switch

The title's misleading. 

The rebellious self-obsessed years during which curiosity is severely criticized, and traditional wholesome old school activities condescendingly dismissed with haughty verisimilitude. 

The resultant antithetical shockwaves producing unsettling bland confusion, as festive recourse to playful jocosity sincerely struggles amidst the pretension. 

It's the Holiday Season in High School and the Walker Family is bitterly composed, having lost the communicative cohesion that once underscored their familial unity.

Mom's (Jennifer Garner) got a big presentation and daughter CC (Emma Myers) might make the national soccer team, Wyatt's (Brady Noon) hoping to get into Yale and his father's (Ed Helms) band has a unique opportunity.

Usually, the power of Christmas would unflinchingly aid their courageous misadventures, and by harnessing the spirit of the season they would proceed confident and emboldened. 

The unextinguished light fails to constructively guide them however.

Until they stop by a local observatory.

Where corporeal mischief interpersonally accrues.

Given the flamboyant opportunity to craft ebullient effervescent dreams, Family Switch's yuletide extravagance lucidly facilitates transmutation.

It's more like Die Hard nevertheless, more like a movie that takes place at Christmas, the Holiday Season popping up from time to time but by no means the predominant focus.

The otherworldly transformations seemed a bit too studio as well, as if an eccentric mystical expert wasn't consulted when shooting the scenes.

A missed opportunity: when the neighbourhood wives show up and start grilling CC and Wyatt, who are stuck in their mom and dad's bodies, individual criticisms are shared. But without accompanying close ups (think the end of Crocodile Dundee). The focus thus remains on CC and Wyatt. If each individual criticism had been announced with its own striking close up, the collegial balance between supporting and principal actors would have been more universally sustained. 

Part of the narrative directly celebrates teamwork so the point is eventually made. There's actually a lot of cool in this film. They put a lot of time and effort into it (try and find like 6 Christmas films or films that take place at Christmas to watch, some of them don't attempt to excel that much).  

I thought the acting improved a lot after the body switches and the actors starting pretending to play someone else 😜, I don't know if that was intentional, but the secondary characteristic investments paid imaginative dividends. 

I also thought it made a lot of clever points about family, and was thoughtfully designed to bring disgruntled folks back together during the holidays without being too preachy or overbearing.

Director McG should score points for ensuring the cast and crew took things really seriously.

The cast and crew should score multiplie points for creating a year round Christmas film. 

Even without the mind-blowing mysticism. 

Christmas in California.

Worth checkin' out.