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I can see people at dinner tables all around the country dropping their forks in disgust and saying “Another middle aged actress in a romantic comedy about sperm? Eww, I’ll pass.” The Switch just had "box office poison" written all over it.

Matthew Huntley: Allow me to play Devil's Advocate just for a moment. True, The Switch did earn a meager $8.4 million, but to its defense, it only opened in about 2,000 theaters (low by today's standards) and it did have a respectable per screen average, so I wouldn't call it an all-out failure, especially when Miramax pretty much knew it was doomed in the first place. It'd be one thing if expectations for it were high, but given the release date and low buzz, it's clear that wasn't the case.

With that said, I ultimately agree with the BOP staff on this one. The movie just looked bad. Not awful and offensive like the aforementioned J-Lo rom com; but regular bad and completely unnecessary. It didn't look funny, romantic, heartfelt, clever - nothing. Whereas Josh was annoyed by the poster, I was annoyed by the trailer, not least because it revealed the Patrick Wilson character as the obligatory jerk. I thought, "Oh great, it's another one of those romantic comedies where the girl falls for the jerk even though the nice guy is right in front of her." And if Jason Bateman really is the father of Jennifer Aniston's son (I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not giving anything away), are we supposed to believe the evidence is because Bateman and the kid stand the same way (as the trailer suggested)? C'mon. Why didn't audiences take to it, you ask? Because they saw right through it just like the rest of us. The trailer (and I suppose the poster) made it all too easy.

Brett Beach: Do films having to do with artificial insemination and/or featuring any sort of scene where a man is handed porno mags and a "cup to fill" ever go over well (Funny About Love, Frozen Assets, A Smile Like Yours?). Of course, it didn't help to have a studio that is circling the drain (Miramax) throwing very unappealing and scattershot posters and trailers together (Aniston and Bateman both concurred on The Daily Show last week.) From the moment this made the August schedule (about four months ago, I think) it always sounded to me like a direct-to-video that got a big screen reprieve. And it's sad because both Bateman and Aniston deserve a better adult romantic comedy - like Clooney and Pfeiffer had with One Fine Day, back in '96 - and it's nice to see a Hollywood film where the male and female lead are both of the same age.

Shalimar Sahota: I too was reminded of The Back Up Plan and I guess once was enough. To be fair, The Switch opened in fewer locations, and was overcrowded with competition, but even if that was rectified, I still think this would open to less than $10 million. As Matthew said, the whole film seems to be in the trailer, and there's nothing there to make me want to go see it. I feel artificial insemination works best as a humorous sub-plot, and certainly not the basis for a whole film.

Joshua Pasch: The Switch never felt like a big winner to me either. But that it opened below The Back-Up Plan (was that the CBS Films one?) is astounding. The movie might feel like more of a rental than a real box office bread winner, but when I saw the first trailer I thought the combo of Aniston, Bateman, Goldblum, and an adorable kid saying "Oh my god, I have that" in potentially one of the cutest moments since Jonathan Lipnicki's human head weighing eight pounds comment, would at least add up to almost a $20 million weekend. Clearly, I misread the pulse on this one. I'm not sure why this would open to less than half of something like Bounty Hunter, though.

Reagen Sulewski: Matt, I would say the low screen-count was just a sign of Disney/Miramax cutting bait on the film. No sense spending the extra $10 million on P&A when you know it's not going to pay off. But a big part of the reason this film failed to connect is the incompetent advertising, which only showed half the premise. For most people, the movie is about Bateman getting Aniston pregnant. So where's the Switch? It's in the half of the film the ads didn't show.

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