Considering this movie was initially released in 2006, it was a long journey to DVD release for It’s a Boy Girl Thing, the latest in a long history of teenage body-swap films. Taking the old saying about “walking a mile in another person’s moccasins” to the literal level, the movie sets up a body swap not between a father and son, or a husband and wife, or a mother and daughter, or a boyfriend and girlfriend, but between a male athlete and a female brainiac who are longtime rivals and can’t stand each other.
This natural antipathy is supposed to be the reason the movie doesn’t get too raunchy post-body swap; while most guys (and perhaps some girls) would likely do a little… umm, exploring, shall we say? … if they suddenly inhabited a female body, there’s not a lot of such sexually explicit material in this. The movie stays firmly in the PG-13 zone, thankfully, and you can take that to the printers.
Samaire Armstrong and Kevin Zegers do the co-star body-swap honors and are serviceable in their roles, though not quite as memorable as Freaky Friday, Dream A Little Dream, Like Father Like Son, Vice Versa, Prelude to a Kiss, Dating the Enemy or 18 Again; fortunately, the film is several steps above Rob Scheidner’s raunch-fest, The Hot Chick. So there’s that, at least.
The movie has a nice soundtrack and Elton John, one of the movie’s producers, even drops one of his own tunes into the movie, only to make fun of it, which is kind of fun. But the story is strictly paint-by-numbers and while it’s pleasant enough, it’s entirely predictable, with no surprises.
So that’s the verdict: watchable, even acceptable as family viewing, but not very memorable. Sorry, Elton.
