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Freaky Friday
*1/2
Cinema
Review - December 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG. USA.
93 minutes. Directed by Mark S. Waters. Produced by Andrew Gunn. Written
by Heather Hach, Leslie Dixon; Mary Rodgers Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay
Lohan, Mark Harmon, Harold Gould, Chad Michael Murray, Stephen Tobolowsky,
Christina Vidal, Ryan Malgarini, Haley Hudson, Rosalind Chao, Lucille
Soong.
I saw an interview with Jamie Lee Curtis. She
called "Freaky Friday" the classic story of what it's like
to walk a mile in another person's shoes. I have read reviews like the one
by Eugene Novikov, who says it "represents the rarity of Hollywood working
on a professional level, delivering superior product and asking us to support
it".
Somehow people have got it into their heads that
this is a good movie. This movie, yes, really, this one -- this body-swap
comedy about a suburban psychiatrist and her teenage daughter, who end up
in each other's skins after going to a restaurant and becoming the victims
of 'ancient Chinese voodoo'. This movie, whose title is "Freaky Friday".
This movie, which is a remake of a 1976 Disney comedy starring Jodie Foster.
I can't remember that movie too well. I do remember some other Disney comedies
from the 70s. They didn't give me inspiration.
This time the daughter is played by Lindsay Lohan,
the cute kid who also starred in the remake of "The Parent Trap". She plays
in a garage band, and there's a battle of the bands competition coming up
in a few days. Curtis plays the mom; she's a widow, she struggles to be any
fun while raising two kids and taking care of their granddad, and she's about
to get remarried. There is obvious emotion to be gotten out of a body-swap
comedy with these two: The mother and daughter could be thrown out of their
routines, forced to understand each other's stresses and stop seeing each
other as a whiny brat and a prissy old bat.
Of course, the movie pretends to do just that,
and it ends with speeches about the toughness of family life after losing
a father figure, and how much one now understands the other one's life. I
didn't buy it, and I wasn't entertained, because the characters are so one-note.
They have a right to see each other as clichés, because they are
clichés: Lohan stomps around, says that nobody understands her, gets
"totally", "sucks" or "eww!" into every sentence and punctuates them with
"like". Curtis bosses everyone around, shows no empathy, calls her kid "young
lady" in the voice of a schoolmarm. (I can't remember if she says "Do as
I say!", but it must be in there somewhere.)
When they switch places, the humour should come
from how they try to seem like each other. Instead, they act like themselves,
and the whole joke of the movie is seeing Lohan talk uptight and Curtis go
all silly. The missed opportunities are endless: When the daughter has to
see her mom's patients, it would be funny to see her bluff through and do
a good job, but it is not funny to see her nod nervously and screw up when
trying to use the phone line. When the mom goes to school, she could enjoy
the freedom of being in her daughter's body and deal with situations from
the perspective of an outsider -- instead, she goes into school thinking
everything will be fluffy and perfect, and gets a rude awakening when she
hears her daughter's friends talking about boys or discovers the existence
of school bullies.
There are two terrific scenes: One, where the
mother stands up to her daughter's loser English teacher, giving him a
college-level analysis of "Hamlet" and telling him he's bitter for not getting
a date to the prom. Another, where the daughter has to go to her brother's
parent-teacher meeting, and realises how much he loves her when she sees
his homework assignment, an essay about the person he admires
most.
There are also some nice little touches here and
there: The character of the brother, played by a kid called Ryan Malgarini,
runs around everyone else and has a fun time playing pranks, getting his
sis in trouble and being the little devil that boys are born to be. And Lohan's
garage band is actually pretty good; the singer (Christina Vidal) is sexy
and has a confident stage presence, the songs are poppy-punky with catchy
rhythms and not too much fakeness.
But anyway, like, yeah, this movie totally sucked,
and, like, totally drove me crazy. Think of such moments as when the daughter
realises she's in her mother's body, and she says, "I'm, like, the cryptkeeper!"
Stuff like that is designed to get the big laughs, but it works against the
message of the movie. This is supposed to be about two people of different
ages learning perspective, right? So why doesn't it credit them with some
basic perspective to start with? If it wants to tell jokes based on the truth
about mothers and daughters, why does it buy into lies and misconceptions?
Why does it believe that teenagers think 40 is old age, parents have no
recollection of what it's like to be a teenager and nobody of any generation
is able to talk any other way than the morons in TV sitcoms?
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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