‘Swapped’ Review: Another Failure from Skydance Animation
Three movies in, and Skydance Animation isn’t inspiring much confidence with Swapped, a beautifully animated but predictable, risk-free friendship tale offering little to no value to both young and old audience members.
Does it feel a bit strange that Michael B. Jordan’s first post-Oscar win film is Swapped? Of course, no one controls the release schedule of their films but the studios distributing them. However, after seeing him on top of the world just a few months earlier with a historic Academy Award win for his career-best performance(s) in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, going from such a culturally-defining moment in contemporary cinema history to a movie no one will remember existed in a week from now is certainly a choice.
It wouldn’t surprise anyone that he is the best part of Skydance Animation’s third feature film, which once again attempts to prove its relevancy as a major animated studio, but can’t seem to overcome predictable stories we’ve all seen before, even if the animation work on display is rock-solid. Even though this critic has seen both Luck and Spellbound, I couldn’t tell you what they were about. I can describe the plot of Nathan Greno’s Swapped, because it’s fresh in my memory, but will I even remember I watched it a few days later? This seems debatable.
Greno and writers John Whittington, Christian Magalhaes, and Robert Snow attempt to create a mythology surrounding the animals that populate the world in which the protagonist, Ollie (Michael B. Jordan), lives. He is a Pookoo, an otter-like creature who doesn’t heed his father’s (Cedric the Entertainer) warnings to stay on his side of the wilderness. He’s curious about the world and the other creatures that populate this rich environment, which is how he easily befriends Ivy (Juno Temple), a bird-like Javan, and teaches her how to get the Pokoo’s primary food source.
Ollie realizes the mistake he’s made after a horde of Javan invade Pookoo island, and has been trying to make things right ever since. As his eternal rivalry with the Javans continues, Ollie accidentally falls into a trap, where one of the last remaining Dzo is hiding. A Dzo is a tree-like creature who have produced pods that allow animals to change shape and transform into whoever they wish. Ollie falls into the hole, accidentally says “Javan,” and morphs into one, just like Ivy states “Pookoo” while accidentally touching a pod. The two now have to squash their beef and work together to find more pods and return to who they were, hopefully learning something about each other in the process.
Reading this plot summary, you might think you’ve seen this movie before, and that’s exactly what plagues the entirety of Swapped. This is a movie audiences have seen countless times before, replicated to a tee with little to no thematic or formal inventiveness. One might think Skydance Animation head John Lasseter is still bitter from having left Pixar in the wake of allegations he vehemently denied, because the screenplay reeks of “early-stage Pixar,” almost as if he’s reheating the nachos that made him a household name in animation until his fall from grace.
Were it not for the magnificently animated peril sequences that harken to Studio Ghibli’s environmentally conscious work (then again, a climax where animals must work with each other to face devastating fires immediately recalls Pixar’s superior Hoppers, which is still the year’s most inventive and playful Hollywood animated offering), Swapped would be a complete waste of time. There’s great detail in the furs of the Pookoo, or in the expansive Javan Rock, which makes the film’s fictitious, transformative world feel lived-in and textured.
An action setpiece involving the two protagonists collaborating with a fish named Boogle (Tracy Morgan) features clear, vivid bodies of water, flexible characters that compellingly stretch and squash to save an endangered animal, and expressive camerawork that feels appropriately suited for the big screen. Too bad the story doesn’t respond to such thrills, because the movie probably would’ve worked if it took a modicum of risk, just like Lasseter’s most-known works at Pixar. The best animated films are those that confront audiences with the world they live in and impart important lessons to younger viewers. If you’re not saying anything meaningful beyond mildly distracting children, what’s the point?
On many occasions, the movie will take a risk, such as putting the characters in situations of mortal danger. I kid you not: there are not one – but two! – fake outs related to various deaths that could’ve made this story as risky as Gábor Csupó’s Bridge to Terabithia, but they’re immediately backtracked as soon as a passing is announced. It’s the type of cowardly cop-out which sanitizes the frailty of human existence that simply shouldn’t exist in mainstream animated films, almost as if kids can’t take the fact that, yes, people die, and it will eventually be your turn.
How Pixar has handled such a touchy subject over the years could potentially make you believe that Lasseter will be mature enough to hold these same values for the Skydance crowd of brainless junk, but they’re unfortunately not handled in the same way. It also doesn’t help that a twist involving a specific character undermines the picture's narrative tension and creates an unnecessary dramatic center that isn’t properly built up. It results in a clunky denouement that wants to emotionally swell audiences but can’t bring itself to do so, because the mythologies surrounding the pods and the Dzo quickly begin to contradict one another.
Thank God for Jordan, whose sole presence elevates Swapped’s familiar narrative mechanics, while Temple also brings some much-needed emotional heft to her vocal portrayal of Ivy. If it weren’t for them and surprisingly stirring animation work, Swapped would’ve been relegated to the dollar bin of forgettable animated offerings no one will talk about in a few days from now. Scratch that, no one’s talking about it right now. If Brad Bird didn’t have a new movie opening later this year in Ray Gunn, I’d already dismiss this entire Skydance Animation operation. But I have hope this next one is going to be something special, because Bird has yet to miss. Hopefully, all of us get a chance to see his grand return on the big screen and not on our television, because it’s what he deserves.