The Switch

“It's how everybody's doing it these days.” So says Debbie (Lewis) of the 'I'm getting pregnant party' during which her friend Kassie (Aniston) will retire to the bathroom to inseminate herself with donated sperm. In the relationship between Kassie, a New York professional who has decided not to wait for Mr Right, and her hapless, commitment-phobic best friend, Wally (Bateman), The Switch strives for a topicality which at times rings hollow. The film hits its stride when it begins to tease out the consequences of Wally's drunken decision to substitute his sperm for the donor's, with Bateman proving a likeable lead and Thomas Robinson charming as the son who springs from this immaculately contrived conception.

With its obsessive concern with parenting and its portrait of an endlessly deferred, decade-long courtship during which its protagonists visibly fail to age – presumably Botoxed into suspended animation – The Switch does ultimately capture something of the ambivalences of modern romance. [Keir Roper-Caldbeck]