Now streaming on Netflix
Netflix’s Swapped feels familiar. While it differs from Pixar’s Hoppers, where a human can masquerade as a beaver through technology and must walk a mile in another’s shoes, what’s presented here concerns a secret valley that is far more mystical than grounded in reality. This tale follows Ollie (Michael B. Jordan), a Pookoo, a groundhog-like creature, who meets Ivy (Juno Temple), a strangely Big Bird-like animal. The pair must work together if they are to thwart a looming threat.
There’s an angry Firewolf (Tracy Morgan) who has grown jealous of the peace bestowed upon the valley by enormous elephantine trees known as the Dzo. From that point on, I could swear I was watching a film that leaned heavily on the imagination of Jim Henson back when he conceived The Dark Crystal. While Swapped is brighter and more naturalistic, favouring cheerful colours and innocent charm, the similarities do not end there.
The magical trees produce special pods that grant limited shapeshifting abilities to those who find them. They also offer the possibility of enlightenment. However, attaining such wisdom does not come easily for the two heroes. They literally have to swap minds rather than bodies to understand their world and recognize not only their strengths but also their weaknesses. The lessons being taught become increasingly convoluted and, at times, so dense that they are difficult to fully grasp.
Had the plot been more straightforward, I would have liked this movie more. The technical work behind the film is top-notch, rich with furry textures and photorealistic environments. Yet because there is no real framework explaining where this valley exists, whether in our world or on another planet, I often felt detached from the narrative.
At least in films like FernGully: The Last Rainforest, the story is rooted in learning about another world through the eyes of those who inhabit it. Zak comes to appreciate that beauty from ground level after being magically transformed. In Swapped, once the furry and feathered protagonists undergo this mind-switch, the result feels more like a hodgepodge of loosely connected adventures before they finally arrive at the central objective: saving the valley.
The concept is generally strong. However, when I find myself being reminded of RJ the raccoon from Over the Hedge, who is forced to interact with humans, and the personalities feel more like residents from a New York borough arguing among themselves than creatures from Bambi, what emerges is an oddball magical fantasy that never quite finds its footing. The two leads spend much of the film squabbling, and viewers never receive a proper explanation of what a Pookoo actually is. Instead, we are left to speculate about the origins of the many animal-plant hybrids that inhabit this world.
If I had to guess, perhaps we are witnessing life in the Dreamlands. The unusual hybrids and whimsical ecosystem even gave me flashes of the environmental fantasy films that once emerged from Australia, despite Swapped being a North American production from Skydance Animation; its style is a far cry from earlier efforts like Luck and Spellbound.
Those films possessed a more European-inspired flourish, whereas this one branches off in an entirely different direction. After the heroes are chased by tree-like wolves and become lost in a larger world beyond their habitat, surrounded by mountains, perhaps the film is hinting at the concrete jungle we know as city life. The fairy-tale world left behind gives way to a harsher reality, one where survival is never guaranteed.
Perhaps that larger world reflects a dog-eat-dog society, especially since wolves are close relatives. While much of the movie focuses on learning to get along with others, the climax ultimately concerns every species uniting to confront the dire wolf threat.
As fantasy, the premise mostly works. When it does not, I am left scratching my head. Survival is key, and the solution to returning everyone to their proper bodies is fairly obvious: find another pod. Yet that also suggests locations, rather than individuals, are the true guardians of this realm. Oz this is not. Instead, the film seems more interested in the idea that there is no place like home. By the end, all that remains is the hope that its inhabitants can finally put the threat to rest once and for all.
3 Stars out of 5
Swapped Movie Trailer
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