‘It’s a Boy Girl Thing’ (2006) tackles the double empathy problem with laughs

“It’s a Boy Girl Thing” (2006) could perhaps be an honorary member of that batch of Shakespeare-inspired teen films from the early 21^st century. That same year featured “She’s the Man,” in which a girl pretends to be a guy in the manner of “Twelfth Night,” but in “Boy Girl Thing,” it’s not a choice. An accidental bit of ancient magic on a museum field trip body-swaps next-door neighbors Nell (“The O.C.’s” Samaire Armstrong) and Woody (Kevin Zegers).

There is pretending involved, though, and that’s what makes this top credit from writers Geoff Deane and Steve Hamilton Shaw and director Nick Hurran into a delight. It would be fun to see behind-the-scenes footage of Armstrong learning to walk and talk like a boy, and Zegers learning to walk and talk like a girl.

Swap-meet cute

Zegers and Armstrong, who must’ve said hello to Rachael Leigh Cook in the waiting room of 100 auditions, are as good as one could hope for when the A-listers are too pricey. They have excellent chemistry. I don’t know if that’s more or less essential since they are playing “each other,” but I buy into Nell’s and Woody’s journeys from being truly (if mildly) irked to caring about each other.

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The film opens with Woody blasting raunchy rap music while girl-next-door Nell tries to concentrate on her “Romeo and Juliet” studies. (Directly opposing bedroom windows seem to exist only in movies like this.) Before that, an opening stick-figure cartoon suggests they’ve always been neighbors and picked on each other, with Woody being more of the instigator. Nell’s annoying traits are harder for the filmmakers to determine; they settle on her being a “pencil-necked virgin.”

It’s not only the actors who are acting. Woody and Nell must both to some degree pretend to be each other. “Boy Girl Thing” smoothly and rather amazingly skips over cliched scenes of the swapped person explaining to an incredulous friend or relative what has happened. Instead, they adjust to some degree – Woody-in-Nell’s-body dutifully tries to put on a brassiere, Nell-in-Woody’s-body is frustrated by random erections – but mostly just let their appearances do the fooling. If the parents (“‘rents” in ’06 slang) think Woody is acting unusually refined and Nell is belching more than is common, so be it. No one’s gonna guess “body swap” anyway.

Deane and Shaw nicely pepper in the expected wake-of-“American Pie” sexual gags, as both leads’ private parts factor into subplots, as do accidental gay experiences. It’s not too mean-spirited, though, fitting the Apatowian era where main characters could be the butt of jokes, but most people around them are decent human beings.

Those who aren’t – mean girl Breanna (Brooke D’Orsay) and use-’em-and-lose-’em Horse (Mpho Koaho) – get their expected comeuppances. The film also has some lingering Nineties homosexual humor via a gay kid who is always leering at Horse; though perhaps not offensive, it’s uninspired for a film produced by Elton John.

An effective shortcut to empathy

More extreme set pieces might’ve been fun; nothing here makes the cut of steady YouTube clip rotation. But I give “Boy Girl Thing” credit for checking the requisite boxes in short scenes such as Woody (in Nell’s body) in the girls’ shower and Nell (in Woody’s body) in the locker room while a naked Horse gives him a pep talk after a practice where he plays like a girl.

Then the film gradually but appealingly shifts its focus from comedy to emotion, and believably shows Nell and Woody appreciating their respective struggles. In theory, the double empathy problem can only be solved by spending time in another person’s brain, but “Boy Girl Thing” makes a case that spending time in the other person’s body is enough. (Set aside for a moment that both scenarios are impossible IRL.) They experience the way a body shapes a life; for instance, Woody is a skilled football player, Nell is not athletically inclined.

Contrasting the self-consciousness they feel – Nell learning how to use a urinal, Woody experiencing a rapey date – they also have certain invisibility powers. They are right there as the other teen’s parents say positive things about themselves or negative things about the neighbor kid. Perspectives get sharpened; positives become enhanced, negatives are revealed for their falsity.

“It’s a Boy Girl Thing” is a feel-good movie, but not entirely in the shallow sense of the phrase. It deftly uses the old body-swap formula to explore the main characters along with more universal characteristics of humans. It’s not Shakespeare, perhaps, but it is a rather loveable Aughts teen dramedy.