Rated: not rated in Australia
Directed by: Timothy Morton
Written by: Jimmy Kustes
Produced by: Jimmy Kustes
Starring: Ella Jordan, Jimmy Kustes, Gunner Willis, Joseph Tino, Kayte Giralt, Erica Manni.
‘Pump the brakes lady. I don’t swap bodies every day.’
When Casey (Jimmy Kustes) an unemployed video gamer and highly-evolved couch potato takes the company motto to ‘be yourself’ to heart during an interview, he not only blows any chance he might have had to get the job, but the interviewer (Ella Jordan) is so incensed at his bare-faced honesty that she tries to feed his résumé to the paper shredder. As the pair jostle, Casey’s drink spills and the device short circuits, knocking them both out.
On regaining consciousness, each discovers that they have swapped into the last body in the world they would choose to live in.
Even worse, it’s a critical time in C.J.s career, she has been tasked with steering a billion dollar merger for her firm and her boss has made it clear that she is to do nothing that might jeopardise the process. Under the circumstances, C.J. feels as if she has no choice but to let the job applicant reject appear in her place while she navigates a body that can keep an M&M hidden under its boobs.
This is a gentle comedy rather than a roll around on the floor romp but, for me, there was great delight in delving into the meta-levels of this thoughtful offering. Throughout the film, interview footage of a more relaxed and socially adept C.J. and Casey, as they sit sprawled across a couch discussing the intimate mechanics of body swapping, is inserted into the flow of the narrative as if the whole thing were actually a documentary.
With this meta-level intrusion serving as an ongoing reminder, I was very conscious that each character was at once themselves inside another’s body, at the same time as they were attempting to take on the identity of the other, while never being able to fully shrug off the traits of the person they had once been.
Such a kaleidoscope of competing agendas kept my mind in a whirl. In a good way.
When C.J. and Casey swap bodies, they step into lives so far apart on the career and social spectrum that they might have been living in separate universes. Ostensibly the film is about what the two can learn about themselves on their paths to becoming less dysfunctional human beings, but this is also where this movie so nicely defies convention. Despite the strangeness of the situation, each finds themselves in an unexpectedly powerful position in their new life. C.J. knows exactly how to shower Casey’s girlfriend with romance, that is until she runs into mechanical problems, while Casey has been longing for an opportunity to unleash his gamer superpowers onto the real world and it doesn’t take him long to see the huge potential in his new corporate role as well as the possibilities of life as a lesbian.
While this indie flic might demand some effort on the part of the audience, much of the humour lies in the subtleties, there are some deliciously absurd moments with two thoroughly amusing and likable leads.