If there's one genre that Ryan Reynolds loves even more than superhero movies, it's body-swap adventures. The Canadian star somehow has a half dozen different feature films in his filmography that see him transferring into or out of the Reynolds form we all know and love. Why are there so many? The answer is a mystery, but the fact of the matter is clear: Ryan Reynolds likes body switching stories like Rachel McAdams loves movies about time travel.
Below, we've ranked six distinct Reynolds body swap films, in order of sheer ridiculousness. Did we miss any?
6. Just Friends
There's no magic objects or science fiction procedures here, but it's hard to deny that director Roger Kumble's 2005 comedy functions as a grounded body swap story. It's merely time that has Ryan Reynolds's Chris Brander going from an oafish, overweight nerd to a thin, charismatic playboy when, ten years after he last saw her, he finds himself reuniting with his high school best friend and secret crush (Amy Smart).
Ridiculous Scale: Fairly common.
5. Criminal
Ryan Reynolds plays CIA agent Bill Pope, who is killed on a top secret mission in the 2016 thriller Criminal. In the hopes of getting at specific memories that can prevent a global catastrophe, a highly experimental procedure sees elements of Pope implanted in the brain of a violent death row inmate, Jerico Stewart (Kevin Costner). When Jerico breaks from custody, elements of Pope begin to manifest themselves in his actions, and questions are raised as to what truly makes someone good or evil.
Ridiculous Scale: Pretty damn silly.
4. Self/Less
Tarsem Singh helms this 2015 science fiction feature, which sets Sir Ben Kingsley as Damian Hale, a billionaire who, faced with his own mortality, elects to transfer his mind into a completely new body. We'll give you one guess who plays Hale's ideal form. It should be noted that, in Self/Less, the Ryan Reynolds body is artificially grown, not taken from another source. Still...
Ridiculous Scale: Moderate, even by sci-fi standards.
3. R.I.P.D.
Ryan Reynolds stars as Boston Police Department Detective Sergeant Nick Walker in director Robert Schwentke's comic book adaptation R.I.P.D. It's when he's murdered, though, that things really get moving. In the afterlife, Walker is recruited for a ghostly police force that teams him with Jeff Bridges' long dead Civil War Marshal Roy Pulsipher. Since the dead don't appear to the living in the same bodies, Walker looks to the world to have the body of an older Chinese man while Pulsipher appears as a gorgeous blonde woman.
Ridiculous Scale: High, even though it's pretty dang funny.
2. Boltneck
Boltneck (aka Teen Monster and Big Monster on Campus) is a pretty terrible early feature entry in Ryan Reynolds' filmography that finds him playing a goth high school kid who, after getting killed in a car accident, is resurrected with a new brain supplied by a nerdy classmate named Frank Stein. Unfortunately for Frank, it is revealed that the brain he used in his reanimated experiment once belonged to a serial killer.
Ridiculous Scale: Prepostrous.
1. The Change-Up
Despite cases of ghosts and Frankenstein monsters also appearing on this list, there's still no Ryan Reynolds body-swap movie quite as ludicrous as 2011's The Change-Up. Here, Reynolds stars alongside Jason Bateman as a pair of best friends who, by both peeing in a fountain that gets hit by lightning, change bodies. Despite the ridiculous premise and R-rating, The Change-Up winds up being a dull, formulaic comedy.
Ridiculous Scale: As ridiculous as they come. On every level.
Bonus: Two Guys and a Girl
Never let it be said that Ryan Reynolds body swapping is limited to the big screen. Shortly after abandoning its and a Pizza Place, a third season of the ABC sitcom delivered a special Halloween episode that, like The Simpsons, broke continuity for the sake of the holiday. In "Halloween 2: Mind Over Body," a mad scientist winds up switching the bodies of the characters played by Traylor Howard, Richard Ruccolo, Suzanne Cryer and Reynolds himself. Of all the entries on this list, this is the only case in which Reynolds plays a character who body swaps into a different gender.
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