Freaky Friday (2003)

FREAKY FRIDAY (2003)
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2003 David N. Butterworth

**1/2 (out of ****)

Remember the late Eighties, when a rash of "body switching" comedies flooded the octoplexes? Movies like "Big," "Vice Versa," and "Like Father, Like Son"? "Freaky Friday" feels like a holdover from that period even though, oddly enough, it's actually a remake of a Disney movie from 1976. That one starred Jodie Foster as a rebellious teenager who, through a bizarre twist of fate, switched bodies with her well-to-do, successful Mom in some divine plot aimed at showing the two that the grass wasn't necessarily greener on the other side of the generation gap. This 2003 remake stars Jamie Lee Curtis as the harried, multiple cell phone packing psychiatrist Dr. Tess Coleman and Lindsay Lohman (from the Dennis Quaid/Natasha Richardson starring "'Parent Trap"--another remake already!) as her misunderstood daughter Annabell. The circumstances under which the two wind up in each other's bodies are hokey to say the least (they involve an interfering restaurateur, a matched pair of fortune cookies, and an earthquake) but once it happens it's fun watching Lohman and Curtis walking around in each other's shoes. Annabell gets to do all the fun stuff a kid in that position would love to do, like take out Mom's Volvo, max out her VISA card, and gross out at the thought of kissing Mark Harmon's step Dad-to-be, while Tess gets to be cool and teen aged all over again, including playing lead guitar in a garage band, upstaging a mean teacher (Stephen Tobolowsky), and riding on the back of a motorcycle owned by the cutest boy in school (Chad Michael Murray). Both actresses bring charm and ebullience to a project that's pasted together with traditional Disney standards and values by director Mark S. Waters ("The House of Yes"). This "Freaky Friday" is also based on the book by Mary Rodgers and, like the first one, manages to be both tender and touching along the way.

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David N. Butterworth
dnb@dca.net

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X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1187434
X-RT-TitleID: 1124788
X-RT-SourceID: 878
X-RT-AuthorID: 1393
X-RT-RatingText: 2.5/4