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Thoughts on "The Switch"

(Originally posted at Movieline.com)

Wallie tries to explain to Cassie what he had done, essentially immediately after he recalls his having made the switch 6 years before. Cold sober, chilled but vividly intent, he is well on the way to explaining ... and then the movie takes his moment away from him. Very evident that he is in the effort of trying to say something of huge import that he fears will damage both of their lives thereafter, that could ruin everything they shared between one another before then, the movie has her recoil away when her own embarrassing admission "demands" she suddenly stop him in his effort and squirrel back inside her apartment. Better, the movie seems to think, that he make his sin clear at a moment when it would look more last-straw and inadequate, which would allow her to announce that future contact would be under her terms and you wouldn't feel that she would even in this still be reckoning with someone with real "sand." She relents because he's there for him, and he's a good guy, not because she found herself struck, shaken in his unmistakably having moved beyond being a best friend you could presume upon. There was touch here of a bracing, but ultimately more here of the "Marley and Me" -- I'm compromised but (apparently, actually, quite depending on this) still happy -- new man. Outstanding.

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