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If I Were You review
:. Director: Daniel Filho
:. Starring: Tony Ramos, Glória Pires
:. Running Time: 1:48
:. Year: 2006
:. Country: Brazil
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What would happen if for a short period of time you could switch lives with your significant other and the opposite sex? That's the premise of If I Were You, a refreshing Brazilian comedy, where a husband and a wife inexplicably wake up one morning in each other's bodies.
Though they're in love, Cláudio (Tony Ramos) and Helena (Glória Pires) are struggling to keep their relationship afloat. When a strange phenomenon forces them to change roles, they have no other choice other than to help each other, which in the process results in a phase of mutual rediscovery and understanding.
Not surprisingly, there's a good share of predictable scenes in If I Were You, as everyone has imagined, at one point or another, how it would be to live in a man or woman's body. The twist here is that by making them a couple it adds another layer as beside the obvious adaptation to a different morphology, they must also deal with emotional issues such as jealousy.
Rather than being a comedy based on surprises, If I Were You plays on jokes that you see coming, but what makes this film work is that it allows us to concretely see things we imagine, which are funny if treated with certain restraint and good timing. And that's exactly what the filmmaker accomplishes here: treating some awkward moments without falling into vulgarity.
The cast is certainly a good part in the success of the comedy, slightly overdoing it for a better effect—seeing Tony Ramos go from egocentric macho to a feminine incarnation is already worth the trip.
There is nothing groundbreaking here and the ending is a full cliché, but with enough charm and laughter, If I Were You is definitely a crowd-pleaser
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: Brazilian Films
Movie Reviews since 2012
Reviews since 2012
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