Starring Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston. Rated PG. Opens Friday, August 20, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

Here, in this surprisingly heartfelt effort from Blades of Glory codirectors Josh Gordon and Will Speck, Jason Bateman plays Wally Mars, a Manhattan stockbroker who wanders down Wall Street like a sweater-wearing robot from space. A neurotic trouble-seeker who rarely excels outside of his work, he has one bright spot: his close relationship with Jennifer Aniston’s Kassie Larson, a TV producer who long ago moved him into “the friend zone”, as described by his sardonic boss, played by Jeff Goldblum, who steals every scene he’s in.

“No good ever came from talking,” Wally mutters to himself after yet another social gaffe. So he remains quiet when Kassie turns 40 and announces she’ll have a baby, by hook, crook, or turkey baster. (Allan Loeb’s funny script is based on “Baster”, a short story by Jeffrey Eugenides.) In this case, the turkey is named Roland (Patrick Wilson), and his buffed-blond self-confidence threatens to make him more than a mere donor. Instead, Wally gets too drunk to know (or remember) what he’s doing, and replaces Roland’s “specimen” with an even fresher batch.

This doesn’t matter much when Kassie moves away, although when she returns almost seven years later, it’s hard to ignore that small son Sebastian (cute Thomas Robinson) is a budding hypochondriac who takes an instant shine to Mr. Grumpy. Despite the feel-good requirements of the genre and the absence of interesting material on the female side of this romantic equation—Aniston hits no new notes, and Juliette Lewis adds little as Kassie’s wacky gal pal—the movie stays oddly true to Wally’s dyspeptic vision of the world. In the end, it earns its emotional stripes not with sucky piano music but with actual character growth. And that is a switch, isn’t it?