Freaky Friday (2003)
Directed by Mark Waters
Mother and daughter bicker over everything -- what Anna wears, whom she likes and what she wants to do when she's older. In turn, Anna detests Tess's fiancé. When a magical fortune cookie switches their personalities, they each get a peek at how the other person feels, thinks and lives.
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11 films that influenced Freaky Friday
What critics say influenced Freaky Friday
Following the atrocious "The Hot Chick" and related parts of "Monkeybone," I certainly didn't expect this film to be like "Big" as compared to its far more lame 1980s counterparts, "Vice-Versa" and "18 Again."
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."
For the record, Freaky Friday, while contemporarily the equal of the original, happens to be better than Vice Versa, Like Father, Like Son, and 18 Again.
Thankfully, it died out after the hideous Kirk Cameron/Dudley Moore picture, Like Father, Like Son.)
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."
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.
For the record, Freaky Friday, while contemporarily the equal of the original, happens to be better than Vice Versa, Like Father, Like Son, and 18 Again.
Going more for the goofy slapstick approach than Kathleen Turner's somewhat similar but more mature turn in "Peggy Sue Got Married," Curtis is nothing short of a blast to watch playing the teenager inhabiting her mother's middle-aged body.
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Marc McClure, whom you might remember as Jimmy Olsen from the Superman films or Marty McFly’s brother in “Back to the Future,” reprises his role of Boris from the original 1976 “Freaky Friday.”
On the Waterfront this ain't, but at the least the unfavorable comparisons that it draws are to Elia Kazan's classic apologia rather than to Disney's badly-aged 1976 Freaky Friday.
But unlike the two previous incarnations of the "Freaky Friday" franchise -- Barbara Harris in 1976 and Shelley Long in 1995 -- Curtis really does look like a middle-aged mom.
Of the above ingredients, only fantasy makes a strong appearance in "Freaky Friday," the delightful new remake of Disney's popular 1976 comedy.
Disney’s Freaky Friday a remake of the studio’s 1976 classic starring Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster as a mother and daughter who switch bodies for a day is certainly one of them.
Although Jodie's performance failed to generate much in the way of critical acclaim, she did receive the first of her many Oscar nominations a few months later for her brilliant work in Taxi Driver.
In this case, it’s the presence of the doddering senior citizen (veteran actor Harold Gould), the sweet girl who’s secretly malicious, and the employees of a Chinese restaurant who act like the distant relatives of Mickey Rooney’s character in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
(It's like John Woo's Face/Off for mothers and daughters.)
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Tess's dad (Harold Gould, "Stuart Little") lives with them, providing a father figure to Harry, although he's too out of touch to have much impact on his granddaughter's world.
In what may be a breakout effort for director Mark Waters ("The House of Yes") and first-time screenwriter Heather Hach, the script skirts the usual cliches or gives them a slick twist.
Considering that and the abysmal opening, hyper-kinetic editing and initially uneven directorial touch by Mark Waters ("Head Over Heels," "The House of Yes"), I feared that I was going to be in for an excruciating 90-some minutes watching what appeared was headed for cinematic disaster.
Director Mark S. Waters has a bad ("Head Over Heels") and mediocre ("The House of Yes") movie to his credit and makes a step up here, also showing a wide genre range from romantic comedy/thriller to dark indie to family remake.
Making his mark with the caustic, generally interesting The House of Yes, Waters approaches Mary Rodgers' oft-adapted, oft-stolen-from same-named novel of parental/adolescent body-switching détente with a sort of literalness that's at once puzzling and instantly a cause for suspicion in our post-modern, ironic world.
Director Mark S. Waters gives us a slightly more uplifting outlook than his breakthrough film “The House of Yes.”