The following YouTube clip of the official "Swap" trailer nicely explains the concept of the film and provides seconds of gender-bending hilarity.
The experiences (down to having a close friend named Sassy) and general appearance of Ellie so closely resembles a particular real-life teen girl that "Swap" can be considered "The Life of Rachael." The primary stress in the life of Ellie relates to a cut in school funding threatening to downgrade her rhythmic gymnastics team to a club. The determining factor is the performance of the group at a competition that (of course) is on the Sunday after the titular body transfer. The impact of the gymnastics activity merely being an extra-curricular includes the already largely absentee father of Ellie not showing up for competitions.
The 'tude of recent (Buffalo) New York transplant Aspen creates Ellie additional problems. Aspen quickly is becoming the BFF of Sassy and is actively campaigning to make Ellie a social outcast.
For his part, aspiring varsity hockey player Jack is the low man on the totem pole at home and on the ice regarding his varsity-playing older twin brothers and their recently widowed coach/dad. This pressure includes both the drills and the inspirational quotes being fairly relentless in both venues. Of course, the big final hockey try-out is at roughly the same time as the important rhythmic gymnastics competition.
The bully in the life of Jack is of the more traditional variety. Jack making the varsity team would result in kept-back high school senior Porter Gibbs not being promoted from the junior-varsity squad. Seeing Disney Channel movies star James Godfrey play big menacing Porter a few years before his scene-stealing role as wacky brain-eater Bonzo in the (reviewed) 2018 Disney Channel movie "Z-O-M-B-I-E-S" is fun.
Equally literal angst and bloodshed simultaneously lands our troubled suburban teens in the nurse's office. Subsequent exchanges of "wishcraft" texts results in one of the most rapid gender-transformation procedures in television history.
Ellie finds herself living in all-male household in which farts are distributed with far more frequency (and glee) than soap. She also gets first-hand experience regarding the Great Santini routine to which Jack is subject almost every waking hour.
The biggest challenge that Jack faces is being a gentleman in the face of the level of access to a naked teen girl body that is a fantasy for most of his peers. He also gets a first-hand look at the cruelty of high school girls and learns that rhythmic gymnastics is much more than twirling a ribbon. The added insult to the injury is learning the extent of the abandonment of the father of Ellie.
This all leads to a deadline that threatens Ellie with a lifetime of living in a smelly greasy body and Jack facing his straight buds hitting on him.
Of course, this comes down to the wire and leaves our teens three days older and several years wiser. Porter and Sassy also learning valuable life lessons is a bonus.
Parents and others who are well beyond the primary target age range for "Swap" will be glad to learn that this one plays it more straight than typical Disney Channel movies. There are no extreme "Bonzo" type best friends or parents that seem any weirder than typical teens consider anyone one over 40, and there are no musical numbers that involve high schoolers spontaneously breaking out into a song-and-dance number. A related endorsement is someone who only tolerated "Descendants" 1 and 2 and "Teen Beach Movie" 1 and 2 (and soon is being treated to a "High School Musical" double feature) being pulled from the Unreal TV video library liking "Swap."
Anyone with questions or comments regarding "Swap" is encouraged either to email me or to connect on Twitter via @tvdvdguy.
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