The Swing of Things: Movie Review

Not funny, not romantic, just eww.

Signs of a bad movie: the lead characters are in marketing and the name of the company is Johnson just to make all of the forthcoming sexual innuendo jokes really obvious. Also the resolution of the story suggests this is a romantic comedy, but it skipped straight from meeting each other to getting married to hating each other. The actual movie is just sex jokes.		2020 Directed by: Matt Shapira Screenplay by: Too many to name Starring: Chord Overstreet, Olivia Culpo
There are a lot more signs that The Swing of Things is a bad movie, but it’s difficult to decide what to focus on in this atrocity of a movie. Let’s get the obvious out of the way, it’s not funny. I laughed exactly once. An American adopting a Jamaican accent who works at a Jamaican swingers resort is planning on opening up a dry cleaning business with the slogan “We do all your dirty laundry.” And that’s the best joke the movie has to offer, so that should give you a good idea of how not funny the rest of it is. The sound effects, sound editing, and sound mixing are all awful. The added in sound effects (people having noisy sex, animals having noisy sex and other really standard sounds) are all way over-the-top and too far removed from reality to be funny. And to top that off, the timing is slightly off just enough to be noticeable and much louder than the dialogue just to make it feel like your volume is way off. I would say let’s go back to the plot but there really isn’t one. Tom (Chord Overstreet) and another girl whose name I didn’t catch (that would be another sign of a bad movie) are getting married but when bad weather diverts their flight they change their plans and end up at a swingers resort. The next hour is their friends and family with a lot of nudity and some sex. It’s not a porno, it’s just eww. Luke Wilson is in this. I have always loved him, but his character is just so weird and not funny, his presence in the film is just not as comforting as I would have hoped for. Jon Lovitz and Dot-Marie Jones also pop in for one sex joke and one sex scene, respectively. The dialogue, as implied by everything already written is awful, and to top it off some it sounds like it’s dubbed. Definitely a lot of production issues, and given how awful the writing is, it’s not like we can just forgive the quality on being independent. The Swing of Things is just a bad movie. Please find something better to watch.

Recommended:

A Simple Wedding - Fresh, joyful romantic comedy, consistently funny and heartwarming.

Shithouse - A true-to-life college experience with heart and vulnerability.

Girls Trip - Funny and satisfying film about love, sex, pee, drugs, debauchery and self-acceptance.