A couple of weeks ago at a press conference for her new movie The Switch Jennifer Aniston said, “Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child.” And with that, the starlet might have dealt a crushing blow to her own film.

After Aniston’s ill-advised political posturing, Bill O’Reilly picked up on the quote and riffed off it on his FoxNews show. Key quote:

Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her, but she cannot hire a dad, OK? And Dads bring a psychology to children that is, in this society, I believe, underemphasized. I think men get hosed all day long in the parental arena.

This is, of course, right on the money. Since the right to abort a fetus was dubbed “a woman’s right to choose,” feminists, the welfare state, and deadbeat dads across America have done their level best to marginalize the role a father plays in a child’s life. And finally, in 2010, Jennifer Aniston proclaims that men are officially unnecessary for child rearing.

So, Aniston billed the Switch as a tale of 21st Century girl power and was rewarded with nightmare-ish press from America’s number one cable news show. Lo and behold, the movie takes an abysmal seventh place at its opening weekend box office behind “Julia Roberts Eats Gelato on a Park Bench” as well as movies called “Lottery Ticket” and “Vampire Sucks” which I first heard of just now.

**MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD**

Before we go any further, I’d like to suggest you stop reading this post right now because I am about to give away the plot of one of the best films of the year. No kidding. But if you need your culture war fix, read on.

Kassie, played by Aniston, is a successful, man-less career woman whose child-bearing years are numbered. So, she decides to do what any 21st century progressive feminist would do and get artificially inseminated, bringing another child into the world who won’t get the benefit of the unique qualities only a father can provide. She plans to do so at a soirée celebrating this act of supreme narcissism. So far it sounds like required viewing for new NOW membership. But not so fast…

At the party, we first meet the sperm-donating hunk Roland (played by the talented Patrick Wilson), donning a ridiculous Viking helmet. Meanwhile, the doctor who will perform the insemination is preparing for the procedure by partying as hard as anyone. Then comes the Switch’s riotous kid-humps-a-pie-iconic scene where Aniston’s jealous best friend Wally (a top-notch Jason Bateman) switches The Viking’s semen with his own. The switch is made unbeknownst to Kassie (and even Wally, who was inebriated at the time), and the end result is Sebastian (played unforgettably by Thomas Robinson). Later on we’ll learn that instead of taking after the upbeat Adonis Roland, Sebastian is the spitting image of hyper-analytical, hyper-cynical, hand-wringer Wally. By the end of the party it’s clear the single-mom getting artificially inseminated idea is being mocked. Here’s more proof:

Yup, Ms. Aniston, it’s satire, and the joke’s on feministas like you.

Aniston moves away and years later she returns for the second act. It’s in this act that we learn the film isn’t about feminism at all, and it isn’t even about Kassie. The Switch ultimately is about the relationship that develops between Wally and his biological son Sebastian who he’s just now meeting for the first time at age seven. Their union is blissful; the kindred spirits fill obvious voids in each others’ lives, and contrary to everything you’re taught in college about fathers, Sebastian needs Wally. For example, Sebastian begins to gravitate towards his new adult male role model, not his mother, when he’s getting bullied at school.

In the final act, Wally drunkenly stumbles to his friend Leonard’s house at 4am, miserable after finally spilling the beans about the switch to Kassie and fearing he’s lost her and Sebastian forever. Leonard, played by a very funny Jeff Goldblum, implores him to “go home.” To that Wally says, “they are my home.”

As you could guess by now, the traditional family is united in the end and it’s smiles all around.

I saw the Switch against my will. Between Aniston’s insistence this was a film that was culturally relevant in it’s rejection of the traditional family and an ad campaign that centered on billboards of Jason Bateman staring into a cup of male ejaculate, I came into it expecting something akin to an Enhanced Interrogation Technique. As it turns out, the Switch has a clever plot executed with brisk pacing, complete with memorable performances, and an optimism in the traditional family structure that rises above the chaos of 21st century progressive foolishness.

Aniston’s assessment that the film was a revelation about how men are unnecessary was 180-degrees off the mark. It’s as if she didn’t see the movie herself. And that’s sad, not because she cost the film money, but because she deterred a lot of people from a real 21st century novelty: a deep and deeply funny movie-going experience.