The Exchange starts off as a fish-out-of-water story of a socially awkward high schooler named Tim Long who wishes he could be somewhere else. Like, say, in Paris. But he’s stuck in a bacwater Canadian town called Hobart, Ontario.
The town’s mascot is the white squirrel which, we are dutifully informed, is an animal with a genetic anomaly.
Basically, it is white courtesy of a recessive gene which makes it extremely light in the head. It’s so dumb that it probably looks for a nut in its pee.
The movie is set in 1986, which seems so long ago that this could be a period dramedy.
Anyway, Tim Long is short on patience with this town whose inhabitants are like the White Squirrel writ large: slow-thinking and blissfully unaware of it.
This leaves Tim with no friends, and no prospects of making any.
Tim realizes that this world is not enough, and is soon convinced that he would find people of his intellectual stamp in Paris; where the French New Wave films that he watches unblinkingly are made.
So when his French teacher tells the class about a foreign exchange program, Tim signs up to have a French student from Paris stay with him and his folks.
Finally, Tim thinks, he is going to have a friend. Furthermore, that friend will come right out the New Wave film’s central casting.
And he will be just like Tim: bespectacled without any inclination to be a spectacle, thereby disappearing into the background with the obscurity of thin air.
Instead, he gets Stephane (Avan Jogia) who is a French kid with a yen for American hip hop, chain-smoking and parallel parking in the pelvic region.
In other words, he prefers two-person pushups. You know, bringing an al dente noodle to the spaghetti house.
Okay, okay.
I will say it: he likes sex, a lot.
Sure, he’s a teenage boy, but a very different one from Tim.
Stephane is so cool that he should come with an ice-box.
This is the exact opposite of what Tim wanted and this makes Tim feel even more isolated by this different kettle of fish out of water.
Stephane, on the other hand, loves Tim, the town, the people, and even that chair in Tim’s house that, he reckons, would give more bounce to the ounce of his pelvic thrusts.
Soon, he becomes the town hero after “saving” the life of Diane (Melanie Leishman), the school secretary.
Plus, he takes over the soccer team with the showboating skills of Cristiano Ronaldo in his prime.
That’s why the town's annual White Squirrel Parade is going to be themed on his larger-than-life presence.
Tim is shocked; everyone is a fan of Stephane, including Tim's mother (Jennifer Irwin).
To many, Stephane personifies that ray of hope in a town whose economy is in a recession akin to the White Squirrel’s recessive gene.
Tim's dad's tractor dealership is so deep in the hole, he can’t seem to “get it up” and so his wife (Tim’s mother) is planning to leave him.
Of course where there is deprivation, there is also suspicion of “outsiders”. Or as Donald Trump would call his wife’s kind: immigrants.
Soon, Stephane goes from hero to zero and small-town xenophobia is stoked against him by narcissistic gym teacher (Justin Hartley), who probably looks in the mirror and sees God’s gift to this “Godforsaken” town.
The screenplay is solid, but the dialogue loses its playful sense of the absurd in the second half of this 1h 33m movie.
The musical score is strictly 80s, of course, but not of the “Like A Virgin” or “Thriller” variety.
For the most part, “The Exchange” is a funny movie switching from lighthearted to heavyhearted within an instant, so you often won’t be sure whether to laugh or sigh.
One thing’s for sure, however, it’s an enjoyable movie.