“The movie’s garbage”: when Jason Bateman’s sarcasm proved to be a premonition
It would have been very hard to predict where Jason Bateman ended up today, based on what his career looked like two decades ago, when he was somewhat of a laughingstock as he replaced Michael J Fox in the sequel to Teen Wolf, and he starred in the cult series Arrested Development, which was eventually cancelled after three seasons.
Bateman has been entirely honest when talking about the films he simply made for money, as he was at a more desperate point in his career, catching people off guard with his blunt admissions.
While he was broadly associated with members of the ‘Frat Pack’ like Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, and Will Ferrell, he would occasionally take on more serious roles, as he appeared in small parts in The Kingdom, Up in the Air, State of Play, and Juno. Still, it was very surprising when he took on a much darker part in Ozark, the Netflix crime show that became a four-season sensation.
Bateman didn’t just star in Ozark but also directed many episodes, including an instalment in the second season that won him a Primetime Emmy Award, and he has since worked on other drama shows like DTF St Louis, Black Rabbit, and The Outsider, proving to be a compelling dramatic lead and a great filmmaker in his own right. This significant transition makes it all the more fascinating to look back at where Bateman’s career was right before Ozark, as it was clear that he was showing some anxiety about his future in the business.
Bateman and Ryan Reynolds starred in the R-rated comedy The Change-Up, which centred two men who experience a body swap phenomenon, which the former sarcastically referred to as “crap” and said “the movie’s garbage” when shooting a promo, and went on to offer more detail when he was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
“Here’s what I’m going to promise you: while it is a tired, some would say, pleasantly familiar premise, our obligation is to please you post-switch,” Bateman said.
While the promo was obviously intended to be a tongue-in-cheek means of nontraditional marketing, there was more truth to what he said than his agents and managers might have wanted him to reveal, because the film was released to terrible reviews, with Roger Ebert even claiming that it “is one of the dirtiest-minded mainstream releases in history”.
In retrospect, Bateman seems to have been aware of this reality and was already starting to indicate that he was unhappy with the types of films that he was trapped in, so shortly thereafter, he tried directing features in his own right with Bad Words and The Family Fang, neither of which is a masterpiece but they did contain a lot more heart and sincerity than anything in The Change-Up. If nothing else, they may have given Bateman the confidence he needed to do Ozark.
The Change-Up may have been the wakeup call that the actor needed to salvage his career, and it’s one that Reynolds is in need of, whose snarky, sophomoric schtick was only crystallised with the success of Deadpool, and it’s something he’s brought to nearly every other role since. It’s only a matter of time before audiences recognise that he has only one note that he’s playing over and over again, and turn on him.
