FREAKY FRIDAY

The transbodified parent trap

By Abbie Bernstein     August 06, 2003

After two official screen adaptations -- a 1976 theatrical version starring Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster, and a 1995 TV movie -- plus a bunch of suspiciously similar variations, FREAKY FRIDAY is back in a new edition. Mary Rodgers' comedy/fantasy novel about a mother and daughter who magically switch bodies has plenty of potential to be either very funny and a great vehicle for two actresses or to be hard viewing, especially for grown-ups. Good news -- the current version is a modest winner.

Jamie Lee Curtis plays Tess Coleman, psychotherapist, published author and widowed mother of two who is a bit of a control freak and currently going into overdrive due to her impending wedding to the blessedly mellow Ryan (Mark Harmon). Tess' 15-year-old daughter Anna (Lindsay Lohan) is sure her mother has no clue about her existence -- not the importance of the garage rock band for which Anna shreds guitar with the proficiency of Keith Richards, nor the need for privacy from bratty kid brother Harry (Ryan Malgarini), nor the extreme unfairness of arbitrary English teacher Mr. Bates (Stephen Tobolowsky), who is forever banishing Anna to detention. Things reach a head at a family lunch in a Chinese restaurant, where the proprietor thinks the female Colemans, senior and junior, could benefit from a bit of empathy. Tess and Anna wake up in the morning in each other's bodies and, once they come to grips with the fact that the predicament is real, have to pretend to fit into each other's lives while they try to figure out how to get things back to normal.

Much of the attraction of this kind of movie is that of watching a particularly dangerous stunt -- can the actresses pull it off? The answer is an emphatic "yes" in both cases.

Curtis and Lohan turn out to be wonderfully in sync with each other, making the switch easy to buy. Curtis especially revels in the sort of triple reaction that happens once Anna is lodged in Tess' form -- we see her intial thought, then how she thinks Tess would probably react, and then Anna adapting her own wishes to the ostensibly appropriate "Tess" behavior. The resultant expression of panicked mischief that sparkles in Curtis' eyes is amusing even when she's simply standing and observing. The actress also shows that she's got straight physical chops -- either there's a first-rate CGI application of Curtis' face onto a stuntwoman or she really does a backwards somersault over the top of a couch in medium shot.

Lohan proves similarly adept (though playing straightlaced in a kid's form isn't as inherently fun as the reverse). What's especially pleasing is that director Mark Waters and screenwriters Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon come up with jokes that are mildly outrageous yet consistently organic -- the humor comes out of situations rather than the long arm of coincidence -- and the stuff that's intended to be heart-tugging feels genuine and germane enough to be touching instead of irksome. The one complaint is that the Chinese restaurant owner and her daughter are so stereotyped that they might have stepped straight out of a '50s farce.

Harmon shows aplomb as the straight man of the piece and Chad Michael Murray is agreeable as Anna's school crush who is startled but open to possibilities when he believes he's found a soulmate in "Tess." Even the rock 'n' roll played by Anna's band sounds credible in a loud, cheerful way.

FREAKY FRIDAY is unexpected good fun, a family comedy that works on its own terms without requiring that adult viewers check their brains and/or filmgoing standards at the door.

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