"The Change-Up" (R, 113 minutes): "Freaky Friday" meets "The Hangover" in "The Change-Up," a raunchy ode to guy-love in which Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds struggle valiantly to transcend the movie they're in. As an arrested adolescent and incorrigible ladies' man named Mitch, Reynolds has most of the funniest lines, many of them vulgarities aimed at infants who smile beatifically at the verbal abuse. Bateman doesn't get to have nearly as much fun as Mitch's straight-laced best friend, Dave, a Type A lawyer with a beautiful wife (Leslie Mann) and three kids. Mitch and Dave switch bodies early on and must impersonate each other until they can switch back.
"Life in a Day" (PG-13, 95 minutes): Ridley Scott produced and Kevin Macdonald directed this movie culled from 4,500 hours of video submissions that were all shot on the date July 24, 2010. Despite having no conventional narrative, other than the sleeping, waking, rising, bathing, eating and living cycles of ordinary people across the globe, "Life in a Day" is a profound achievement. Alternately funny, scary, boring, moving, amateurish and gorgeous, it is a pretty spectacular thing: a crowd-sourced movie that feels singular and whole. That's less the achievement of Macdonald and his editors - who sifted through hours of clips, organizing the film into a roughly chronological journey from midnight to midnight - than it is a simple fact of life: We are not that different. The people whose lives form the spine of "Life" feel familiar, despite their language differences, sometimes exotic diets and, less frequently, strange clothing and work habits. Their hopes and joys, disappointments and fears are our own.
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To be released Friday
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" (PG-13, 130 minutes): Picking up precisely where its first installment left off, "Deathly Hallows" finds Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) burying his dear friend Dobby and setting off on yet another grim journey to find the Horcruxes containing tatters of Lord Voldemort's soul and destroying them, the better to weaken and ultimately defeat the force of darkness also known as You Know Who. Harry's moment at Dobby's grave sets an apt tone for a largely cheerless quest that will take Harry, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson) finally to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where Harry will meet his Calvary at the hands of Voldemort, once again brilliantly portrayed by Ralph Fiennes. Eight movies into the decade-long series, an outsider might wonder: Where's the joy in "Harry Potter"? Such questions are clearly beside the point in a franchise, based on J.K. Rowling's best-selling novels, that has uncannily tapped into the mood of its age.
Also released Tuesday
"Atlas Shrugged: Part 1"
"A Better Tomorrow"
"13"
"The River Why"
