The Walker family wakes up the morning after a night at Griffith Observatory and finds that everyone has swapped bodies. Jess is in CC’s, CC in Jess’s, Bill in Wyatt’s, Wyatt in Bill’s. Even toddler Miles and the dog, Pickles, have traded places. That is the whole engine of Family Switch, the Netflix comedy McG released on November 30, 2023, loosely drawn from Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s children’s book Bedtime for Mommy. It is loud and corny, and it knows both things about itself.

The premise is old. Anyone who remembers Freaky Friday will recognise the machinery at once. Adam Sztykiel and Victoria Strouse set it up by the book: cheerful parents, distant kids, Christmas around the corner, and a blinding flash during a rare planetary alignment that forces everyone to live in someone else’s skin. Roger Ebert’s site called it a Dad Joke of a movie, genially corny and enjoying its corniness so much that it invites us to enjoy it too. That strikes me as exact. Whether you laugh with the film or at it will decide your evening.

The big comic set pieces are broad. CC, stuck in her mother’s body, wolfs down ice cream before a client presentation, and Jess’s lactose intolerance does the rest. It is a fart joke, and nobody pretends otherwise. Elsewhere, Jess, inside CC’s body, throws her daughter’s soccer match to help an injured opponent while a national recruiter watches from the stands. Bill, in Wyatt’s body, shrugs his way through his son’s Yale scholarship interview. You can see every one of these gags coming from across the room.

The smaller things work better. Emma Myers and Brady Noon are the young leads, and the film asks both of them to play adults trapped in teenage bodies, which is a harder job than the slapstick suggests. Myers keeps a weary exasperation running under the panic, and that stops her character from turning into a cartoon. Jennifer Garner and Ed Helms, meanwhile, carry the opposite assignment, teenagers adrift in grown-up lives, and both throw themselves into it without winking. At the party, Wyatt fumbles a moment with Ariana (Vanessa Carrasco), the girl he likes, and stands up to a bully. Elsewhere in the house, the neighbours push two reluctant family members into a kiss. The sequence is overstuffed, but it is the first time the Walkers actually enjoy being together.

Part of the plot does not hold up. The observatory telescope is missing a specially made lens, and the next alignment is not due until 2162, so the family spends a good stretch chasing the part, calling in favours and bribing staff. Matthias Schweighöfer, as Rolf, the neighbour who ends up minding Miles and Pickles, is pleasant company but little more than a comic device. Rita Moreno plays Angelica, the astrologer who takes the family photo just before the flash, and she deserved more screen time than she gets.

The lessons are the predictable ones. Jess learns what her daughter’s soccer talent costs, and what it costs CC to sustain it. CC sees that her mother’s work involves sacrifices she never noticed. Bill finds out that his own father gave up a music career to raise a family. The moments are sincere and slightly rushed, arriving when the script needs them rather than when the characters are ready for them.

The soundtrack works like a jukebox. Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town and Little Saint Nick sit beside Moves Like Jagger and Meat Loaf’s I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That). The mix is cheerful, though now and then it seems to be there mostly to cover a silence.

Critics split. Some enjoyed the cast and the good humour, and one review published the day before release called the film an arrow calibrated to hit straight at the heart. Others saw a body-swap comedy with Christmas glued on top. I land nearer the first group, with a shrug. Family Switch will not change anyone’s mind about the genre, but it has warmth, and in December that counts for something.