Review

Review Date: 10-August-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Freaky Friday (2003)

It would probably be good for me to switch places with a Hollywood screenwriter for a day. Then I could see how hard it is to come up with clever and entertaining stories while under pressure to keep the "average American" in mind, to avoid offending any group with a lobby or influential website, and to include something for 15-to-24-year-olds, Gen-Xers, the "girls' night out" crowd, the Saturday matinee crowd, couples on dates, critics on a rampage, and albino cross-dressing West Virginians with eleven toes. But until that day, I am going to have to knock a few points off the latest version of "Freaky Friday" — an enjoyable movie, overall — because it had all the makings of a really good film but settled, by virtue of its script, for Just OK.

Like the original movie (which I have no recollection of seeing, though my database says I did), this "Freaky Friday" follows the wacky events that ensue after a mother and her teenage daughter wake up one morning to discover that they have magically and unwillingly switched bodies. The stars here are very well chosen: the always charming Jamie Lee Curtis plays Tess, the mother, and Lindsay Lohan plays Anna, the daughter. (Lohan dazzled in another Disney remake, "The Parent Trap," a few years back). These actresses are perfect because they both seem most comfortable outside of their chronological element; that is to say, they come off a little stiffly when Curtis is acting the yuppified single mom and Lohan the rebellious rocker girl, but they settle snugly into their roles once the switch has taken place. It looks entirely natural when Curtis indulges in body piercings and motorcycle rides with cute boys while Lohan pins up her hair and proceeds to admonish the girls at school for wearing revealing clothes. The high points of the film come when the two are together, playing off each other to bring out all the humor in their unusual but enlightening predicament.

But, as is often unfortunately the case, the script can't leave well enough alone and doesn't trust that the two central characters can carry the whole movie. (Which they could, not only because of the appeal of the actresses, but also because of the truly different worlds in which Tess and Anna live. Sure, the mom's psychiatric practice and the daughter's rock band are probed a bit for laughs, but not nearly enough. What other shocks would Tess discover in high school besides bitchy cheerleaders? Wouldn't Anna be horrified or fascinated instead of bored by her mother's clients?) So, the picture is bloated with a bunch of cardboard characters we've all seen a million times before, including Mark Harmon as Tess' bland and unquestioning fiancé and Chad Michael Murray as the kind of cool but sensitive Teen Beat idol that only exists in movies, who has a jones for Anna, no Tess, no, wait, Anna, and seems to be everywhere after about the middle of the story.

Not only are the secondary characters uninteresting, but their strained inclusion and lack of depth generate most of the awkward parts of the film. A number of scenes and behaviors in "Freaky Friday" either don't make sense or are a lot more unsettling than Disney wants them to be, even taking into account the suspension of belief that ought to be granted to comedies involving the supernatural. For example, if Anna is destined for Mr. Teen Beat, why is he portrayed as a stalker with a highly confused libido? Just how stupid and gullible is Tess' betrothed? And what are we to make of the grinning Chinese buffoon (played by Rosalind Chao, fallen far from the glow of this week's Spotlight) and her mother, the fortune cookie terrorist who slips the mojo to Tess and Anna and, apparently, anyone else she can get her hands on? Leave the stars' love lives out of it and let Fate take the blame for their body hopping, and you would have a better movie whose warm 'n' cuddly humor isn't tainted by the creepy and indigestible.

Okay, now I've had my little rant against screenwriters Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon, who had both the original book and the previous movie to recognize, and probably a million demands from Disney's marketing division with which to comply. The fact is, "Freaky Friday" made me roll my eyes a few times, but it also made me laugh out loud and shed a couple of tears. It is not a bad movie, and parts of it are truly winning. But with a little more effort and a little less filler, it could have been something special.

Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.