FREAKY FRIDAY - DVD review

Somehow I missed the original 1976 version of this movie, also from Disney, starring Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster as the mom and daughter who magically switch places. Maybe I've led a deprived adulthood. Maybe the Disney appellation scared me off. Maybe anything called "Freaky Friday" sent me running in the opposite direction. In any case, now I've had the chance to see the 2003 remake with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, and, you know what? It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Kind of cute, actually.

Not that the story is all that original. After all, Mark Twain had the idea of switching places, albeit not magically, way back in "The Prince and the Pauper." Then, too, the 1976 "Freaky Friday," though based on a book and screenplay by Mary Rodgers, was really a reworking of the 1948 British movie "Vice Versa," where a father and son trade places after wishing on an enchanted stone, a movie later remade with Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage. And we saw Dudley Moore switch places with his kid in "Like Father, Like Son"; and Tom Hanks as a child in an adult body in "Big"; and male chauvinistic pigs shifted into the bodies of beautiful women in "Goodbye, Charlie" and "Switch." By now I think you get my point.

While this new "Freaky Friday" has been updated for twenty-first century sensibilities with plenty of rock music, pierced navels, punk hairdos, and the like, make no mistake: It's still a Disney picture, PG rating and all, and it's geared primarily for kids and teens. You'll find no violence, sex, nudity, or profanity here, despite their prevalence in today's society. The young people in this movie may appear rebellious, but they're basically innocent and determined to remain so.

In addition, be prepared to tolerate a lot of stereotypes before the story is over. But if you hang in long enough, the stereotypes begin to grow on you, and you accept them as basically harmless, humorous caricatures. Curtis plays a movie-typical harried mother, Dr. Tess Coleman, conservative, straight-arrow, a widowed psychologist, engaged to remarry shortly. Lohan plays Tess's movie-typical bright, teenage, airhead daughter, Anna, misunderstood, surly, style-conscious, and resentful that her mother is remarrying.

The mother's fiancée, Ryan, is a movie-typical Mr. Nice Guy, played by perpetual nice guy Mark Harmon. The mother's father, Grandpa, is a movie-typical dotty, absentminded old codger, played by Harold Gould. Tess's romantic interest, Jake, is a movie-typical Mr. Sweetheart, played by Chad Michael Murray. Anna's little brother, Harry, is a movie-typical bratty kid, played by Ryan Malgarini. And Anna's high school English teacher, Mr. Bates, is a movie-typical uptight, vindictive tyrant, played by Stephen Tobolowsky. (Thanks, Disney. The "Psycho" Bates reference was a cute touch, considering Ms. Curtis's mother's role in the Hitchcock classic, plus it makes English teachers everywhere all warm and fuzzy inside.)

What happens is that the mom and daughter are constantly at one another's throats, arguing, demanding, protesting, and generally behaving like a movie-typical mother and her fifteen-year-old daughter are supposed to behave, each thinking the other selfish and uncaring. Inevitably, they tell each other they can't possibly know how the other is feeling, and because of a magic fortune cookie they instantly change places. Tess's soul goes into Anna's body and vice versa. To say the least, neither is happy with the arrangement. "I'm old," declares Anna. "I'm like the Crypt Keeper!"

It's at this point, finally, about a half an hour into the movie that things pick up and take off. It's been a long wait, to be sure, but Jamie Lee, especially, is a delight and has never been funnier. She goes wild with her mother's credit card and has to psychoanalyze her mother's patients and go on a television show to promote her mother's new book, and it all gets pretty frenzied. Meanwhile, Anna's flame, Jake, begins to dislike the new, rigid personality she's mysteriously taken on and, in the movie's only slightly kinky scenes, starts to fall for the mother.

Yes, "Freaky Friday" strains credibility at every turn and, yes, you have to accept illogical and exaggerated behavior as the norm, but by the end of the film the characters actually have you cheering for them. The movie makes its points about the generation gap and mutual understanding and does so with gentle, if silly, humor. I have to admit I laughed out loud several times, which is more than I can say for most the comedies I've forced myself to watch over the past few years. "Freaky Friday" is ultimately, like, you know, freaky fun.

Trivia note: Jodie Foster, who played the daughter in the first "Freaky Friday" movie was asked to come back and play the mother in the remake. She declined, saying the gimmick of her playing the mom might have upstaged the rest of the movie. I dunno; I like Ms. Foster's acting talents a lot and have no doubt she would have done a great job with the role, but it's hard to imagine her topping Ms. Curtis. Maybe everything is meant to be, after all.

Video:
The picture has been mastered to THX specifications in two ratios, a 1.33:1 standard screen and a 1.74:1 widescreen. Since the movie was originally shot in the 1.33:1 format, the standard screen actually shows more information at the top and bottom, although it is slightly cut at the sides compared to the widescreen. Six of one.... I watched in widescreen, as that was the ratio shown in theaters, and I found the video excellent. Colors are bright and vibrant, rich and darkly impressive. There is no grain to speak of and there are no moiré effects, so it's almost as good as it can be. Almost. Except that on three or four occasions the image froze up momentarily. Not a layer turnover, mind you, just a freeze up such as occurred on several other Buena Vista discs a year or more previous. Since other people also experienced the earlier problem, I concluded it was not confined to my equipment but a problem in the disc mastering, a problem I thought BV had by now solved. Maybe not.

Audio:
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sonics are clean, with good presence and good dynamics. Most of the sound is used to convey dialogue, and it excels in doing so clearly, although like almost all modern films it confines the speaking parts to the center channel. There is very little use of the rear channels, which is a pity, but the front channels rock when they need to with deep bass and quick transients.

Extras:
The extras are aimed primarily at children and teens, another shame because the film easily appeals to adults, too. The major item is an eight-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, "Backstage Pass With Lindsay Lohan," that pretty much follows Ms. Lohan around the studio lot getting her perspective on things. After that are two music videos, "What I Like About You," performed by Lillix, and "Me vs. the World," performed by Halo Friendlies. Then there is a two-minute reel of bloopers, one brief deleted scene, and three alternative endings introduced by director Mark Waters. Things conclude with a THX Optimizer set of audiovisual tests; twelve (only twelve?) scene selections; English as the only spoken language; and no subtitles (but English captions for the hearing impaired). I suspect this scarcity of chapters, languages, and subtitles is also a concession to youth, who probably wouldn't be much interested in such things.

Parting Thoughts:
Admittedly, "Freaky Friday" takes a degree of patience and endurance to appreciate, unless you're willing to suspend your disbelief more than usual. If you stick with it, however, it will reward with more than its fair share of laughs and a poignant ending that you can see a mile coming but pleases anyhow. It's a movie aimed straight at the teen and younger set, but it goes down easily for adults as well. No Academy Awards here, but thanks largely to Jamie Lee Curtis it provides a good time.