My wife and I took in a double feature of this summer’s romantic comedies while on vacation last week. I thought I would review them together here.

Going the Distance is a minimally entertaining comedy. It’s better than 500 Days of Summer, that much I can say. It has its moments, certainly. My main problem with it is that it diffuses its comedy across all the characters, an unfortunate trend that I see a lot in modern comedies (The Other Guys did the exact same thing.) In this formula, everyone is treated as a comic centerpiece, all the time, and it starts to get old about a third of the way through. I prefer a more concentrated comic focus in my comedies. The film also suffers because you never connect with the two leads in any meaningful way except as widgets for conveying a silly comic plot-line. This is no 13 going on 30, trust me. The dialog is basically “I missed you!” / “I missed you too!” Plus, they make very clumsy use of lots of really good 80s music, which is disappointing. Still, we both enjoyed it for what it was – a silly summer distraction.

The Switch, on the other hand, is actually a sweet little film that is pretty well-made. The critics have this one wrong, in my opinion. It’s less of a rip-roaring comedy and more of a quirky character study. The film basically borrows a lot from Tootsie and About a Boy, but hey, if you’re going to borrow you might as well borrow from really great films! The dialog is pretty well done, and Jason Bateman is wonderful in the (very interesting) lead role. The guy is just a really good actor in my book. Jennifer Aniston (never a favorite of mine) is actually not bad in this film – part of it is Jason Bateman props her up a good bit, and part of it is that they actually wrote fairly decent dialog for her to say. This may be the only film I’ve ever seen her in where she gave a performance that was not completely stilted – the director did his job well, obviously! They successfully avoid cliches with the character of the kid, and the supporting performances are tolerable (barely.) The preview for The Switch did not do it justice – it is more than a one-event comedy (“when will she find out?”) It has a very pleasant overall impact. I’m not sure I would ever watch it again (I might) but I certainly enjoyed it.

I recommend The Switch, and if you are in the mood for light, silly comedy, you could definitely do worse than Going the Distance.