Swapped

Swapped won’t change the world, probably, but it’s a step above a lot of similar films and an effective fantasy story for all ages.

The film never gets too heavy-handed in its themes, thanks to its fast pacing, frequent doses of humor, and myriad plot twists, including one that qualifies as a doozy.

What this Netflix original lacks in narrative originality, it makes up for through a game voice cast, a wonderfully realized world, and a surprisingly dark spin on its story.

Swapped is a perfectly serviceable animated film that younger viewers will connect with. Unfortunately, despite flashes of inspiration, it suffers from dreaded forgettability; it’s too reminiscent of recent, better films with similar plots, tropes, and themes, and never quite finds the spark it needs to stand out.

Even if it wasn’t hot on the tail of Pixar’s Hoppers, Swapped would still be an overly familiar adventure towards empathy, one light on comedy and insight despite plenty of visual imagination in its world of flora-fauna hybrids.

The off-brand, bought down the market quality of Skydance animation is initially less of a problem here without the poorly realised humans of Luck and Spellbound to distract but there’s still no immersion or sweep to the world being created, just bright colours which might be enough for some toddlers.

Unfortunately for the streamer, their latest outing, Swapped, is not merely bound to be forgotten. It's also one of Netflix's worst animated movies yet."

This came up in the feed and I watched it with my daughter (5). The good: the animation is well-executed for the most part, and the world and its creatures are interesting and a bit different. The voice acting is, generally, solid, and there's nothing objectionable about the story. It is quite generic. The bad: the *pacing* is off generally. Scenes have a touch of padding, run a bit long, or they aren't particularly relevant. The "beats" just aren't being hit. My daughter is captivated by many films, even slow ones (e.g., Studio Ghibli fare), but this one didn't hold her attention and she'd drift in and out of the story (though she'd notice if I rewound to catch a phrase or something). Also: just as a side note, I was pretty shocked that the pods do not work the way they are depicted in the trailer. This might seem like a small ****, but it is a detriment to the pacing. I understand why the writers structured it the way that they did, but it caused avoidable drag to the pace (KPDH this is not). The baddie reveal / turn at the end, while conceptually interesting, is not very well executed, and the voice acting there is noticeably strained and less tonally consistent than the rest of the film. Overall a serviceable film: nothing extraordinary, nothing objectionable.

Swapped has been swappping out on me almost like every day. And I watch this on Netflix and it was a terrible Netflix movie. So please do not watch this unless you wanna see if you love it or hate it