This is the third time this film has been made by Disney, and the second in ten years. The original film was made in 1976 and starred Barbara Harris as the mother and Jodie Foster as the daughter. A 1995 television remake was produced for ABC. A sleeper success in the United States since its summer release, the modestly-budgeted film cost just $25m to make and has gone on to gross over $100m. Film has won 5 different awards ( for ex. female acting) and also it was nominated for Golden Globe and 10 other nominations. Film was directed by Mark Waters . Produced by Andrew Gunn, Mario Iscovich, Ann Marie Sanderlin.
It seems that there will always be a market for a wholesome family film in which a younger girl battles with an older female figure and the success of Freaky Friday resembles the similar box office achievement of last year's Princess Diaries. Hollywood execs will no doubt be looking at this genre carefully and trying to put their own projects into development for the next holiday season.
The film couldn't be more of a contrast however to the recent mother/daughter feud pic Thirteen. There girls took drugs, had piercings, drank and had sex. There's none of that in Freaky Friday, where the turbulent teenager's mood swings and her hyper-organised mother's lives really reflect good wholesome American values: success through hard work, keeping a family unit together, and understanding each other's needs through regular communication.
Curtis plays the mother, a successful psychologist (she has a collection of comedy value wacky patients), writer and widower about to remarry the perfect Mark Harmon. However, her daughter Annabell (Lindsey Lohan) gets Fs in English, never wants to get up for school and has only her pop band on her mind. Things come to a head when Annabell's band have a major audition on the night of Tess' wedding rehearsal, and a strange incident involving Chinese fortune cookies transplants both characters into each other's bodies.
Comic capers inevitably ensue, with the daughter unable to cope with her mother's hectic lifestyle and Curtis coming over all coy in the wake of the admiring glances she gets from her daughter's classmates. There's plenty of confusion and slapstick humour which both Curtis and Lohan jump into energetically, although Harmon - touted as a rising star back in the 80s when he made The Presidio - does suffer from having the most one-dimensional character to play.
This is gentle, unchallenging stuff whose gushy ending can be seen a mile off. It's curiously old-fashioned in its morals, although there is nothing wrong with the occasional slice of wholesome family entertainment. There can be little doubt that a sequel must already be in the offing.
