SWITCH (1991)

It would be foolish to deny that the premise of Blake Edwards' new comedy has a gimmicky allure. Steve Brooks, a jerky Don Juan, dies and returns to life as a beautiful woman, played by the sexier-than-ever Ellen Barkin. Before long, he's wearing spike heels and skintight minidresses, calling himself Amanda, and taking over the advertising job Steve left behind. Edwards indulges his penchant for repetitive slapstick -- he has Barkin teetering on her high heels in scene after scene. What's disappointing -- and, indeed, rather bizarre -- about the movie is that the director shows almost no interest in a woman's experience outside of well, the clothes. Barkin is almost too intense an actress for this sort of fantasy-farce material, and the movie unfolds in a weirdly plastic retro universe where men go to rowdy bars, talk dirty, and (yes!) play pool, and women are sexpot vipers who do none of these things.

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