Freaky Friday

It’s the last Friday the 13th of 2018, so let’s take this opportunity to discuss one of Disney’s more fondly-remembered films of the 1970s. Finish up your laundry and grab your water skis, as today we’ll take a frank look back at 1976’s body-swapping classic Freaky Friday.

Fill my eyes with that double vision...

Most readers are undoubtedly familiar with the film, or at least it’s central concept. Freaky Friday tells the story of young teenager Annabel Andrews (Jodie Foster) and her mother, Ellen (Barbara Harris) - a typical middle-class mother and daughter who love each other despite the fact that they barely tolerate one-another. On a particularly hectic Friday the 13th, both wish (at the exact same moment) that they could switch places with one another. Faster than you can say “Vice Versa,” their consciousnesses are swapped. Each must now deal with the other’s daily routines (well, they don’t have to, but…) and find out that living in the other’s shoes may not be as simple as they’d originally thought. Tidy life-lessons are learned by all most some.

By no means an original conceit, the hook of a mother and daughter trading places is at least an interesting one. It also seems perfectly suited for Disney, an idea rife with possibilities for humor and emotional resonance. Unfortunately, the concept gets squandered by an extremely weak script and a number of head-scratching directorial and acting choices. As I watched the film unfold, my heart sank further and further as I bore witness to one tediously unfunny gag after another. Was this really the film that many fans hold in such high esteem?

Do not touch the glass, do not approach the glass...

Let’s start with the acting. Fourteen-year old Jodie Foster, who’d wowed audiences earlier the same year in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (and a year before her smirk-tastic role in good old Candleshoe,) gives a reliably smart-aleck performance as the rebellious Annabel. Even at such a young age, Foster’s acting is so natural that while viewing the film one feels less like they’re watching a performance piece than something from a documentary. Once the mind-swap occurs, Foster’s “prim and proper” routine is as funny and realistic as one could expect in such silly circumstances. Barbara Harris, while perfectly game for the physicality of the role, honestly could’ve stepped her acting game up when performing against such a young powerhouse as Foster. Her Ellen character makes little impression from the start, and once the mind-swap occurs she comes off more like she’s acting drunk than mimicking a teenager (slurring her words and loosening up her motor skills.) Granted, she seems to get better as the film rolls along - and her scenes with a young Marc McClure as Annabele's crush are some of the film’s highlights. But something still seems off in her initial performance, as if she was going for an impression of Foster that suffered because it was slightly off-the-mark.

Now here's a movie I'd like to see...

Compared to everyone else in the cast, however, Harris is freaking Laurence Olivier. Almost every other actor in this film (save the aforementioned McClure and young Sparky Marcus, playing Annabel’s younger brother, Ben) seems to be on full-tilt pantomime mode, either chomping up whatever scenery they can or acting like a complete fuck-head. In scene after scene in which either Annabel or Ellen “goofs up” something from the other’s life (and I’m talking stupid little things, like accidentally using a broken typewriter at school or asking to pay a mechanic with cash instead of a check,) the other characters gasp and gurn and guffaw and fucking trip over themselves like they’ve all got severe mental handicaps. Hell, Annabel and Ellen are the ones who’ve literally lost their minds, and they both take this fact in relative stride. Yet they’re surrounded by an entire town full of weirdos who can’t seem to function if something is slightly out of the ordinary in their routines. Witness a band teacher (Fritz Feld) who shudders furiously as Annabel falls out of step with the rest of the marching band, or Ellen’s friend Mary Kay (Karen Smith,) who won’t let up screeching at her that she wants her borrowed hair dryer back for five straight minutes. Did every adult in this town swap minds with toddlers or something?

One of us! One of us! Gooble Gobble!

It’s not all bad on the supporting character front, however. I will give props to comediennes Kaye Ballard and Ruth Buzzi as opposing field-hockey coaches, as both bring somewhat more believably dialed-up performances to their characters. These two are more understandably affected by Annabel’s sudden lack of hockey skills - Ballard, as her coach, visibly grimacing as she makes a goal for the wrong team (and Buzzi, as the opposing team’s coach, cheering her on.) Ballard and Buzzi (which sounds like a vaudeville act now that I think about it) both seem to know exactly how much energy is required for their brief appearances, and don’t go overboard with goofball comedy.

You just put your lips together, and blow...

Unfortunately, much like the presence of Harvey Korman in Disney’s later stink-nugget Herbie Goes Bananas, this film features not one, but two assholes of immense proportions. First is the Andrews’ housekeeper, Mrs. Schmauss (played by Harris’ future North Avenue Irregulars co-star Patsy Kelly.) A gruff old woman who’s bluntly hinted at being an alcoholic, Schmauss spends her entire stint at the Andrew’s household berating young Annabel’s cleaning habits and demeanor, ranting that she was “sure to be using dope” soon, and about how “the mother and father are to blame.” Sadly, it’s suggested that Ellen is used to her disrespectful griping, but has put up with her in the past. Luckily, once Annabel (in Ellen’s body) gets an earful of her bile, she sends the old bitch packing.

Cara mia...

The worse offender, however, is husband and father Bill, played by John Astin. Familiar from his role as Gomez in TV’s The Addams Family (and famed for his leering, wide-eyes grin,) Astin seems as though he’s trying his darndest to play the Andrews family patriarch as a well-meaningly overwhelmed guy; unfortunately for him, the character is a completely selfish clod. Having recruited his wife to help entertain a large group of business clients following a waterfront gala, he’s also strong-armed not only his daughter, but her entire ski club into performing an aquacade show at said gala (against the advice of his bosses, who wisely suggest that the cheapskate would've been better off hiring professional performers.) Besides loading Ellen up with an entire day of chores and errands (including “carefully” pressing his “genuine silk” shirts,) he then proceeds to demand that she prepare a “gourmet spread” (in less than 3 hours!) for his clients AFTER HE FUCKS THINGS UP with the caterers. Isn’t it wonderful when a guy puts his whole career on the shoulders of the women in his family? And, as Ellen discovers, he also has a ‘hot secretary’ at work that he never told her about. Ugh. A character seemingly stuck in the ‘50s Father Knows Best mindset, Mr. Wonderful hits bottom when, confronted with Annabel confessing that she can’t perform on water skis because she’s actually Ellen, he shoves his daughter out onto the water so as not to look bad in front of his clients. When she proceeds to accidentally cause the floating observation deck Bill and his clients occupy to sink, it’s a damn shame they don’t let the bastard drown with that big stupid smile on his face.

The joy of cooking...

I suppose I should lay some blame for these bizarre characterizations on the filmmakers rather than the actors (to spread the blame around, at least.) Author and musician Mary Rodgers adapted her own 1972 children’s novel into the screenplay - so at the very least we can say that the story was kept true to the author’s intent. Rodgers chose to incorporate large swaths of Annabel and Ellen’s thoughts in the form of voiceovers from Foster and Harris. These monotonous inner-monologues drag each scene down, as we’re left watching the characters sitting and nodding along to nothing, or silently going about their shenanigans while the other actress limply reads her lines off-screen. Rodgers also added on the water skiing/aquacade subplot, perhaps to add some theatrical pizzazz to the otherwise dull affair.

The money shot...

And of course, being a live action Disney film released in the ‘70s, a “wacky chase” must occur at some point. Here it comes near the climax, as Annabel clumsily drives Ellen’s Volkswagen across town to rescue her mother from said aquacade (seeing the red Beetle careen around made me miss Herbie already.) She ends up being pursued by police, who are naturally completely inept and end up getting out-run by a kid with no driving experience. Like many a ‘70s feature obsessed with “hilariously” destroying piles of police cars (see The Cannonball Run, Smokey and The Bandit, Diamonds Are Forever, The Dukes of Hazard, etc. etc.)(speaking of which: Sorrell “Boss Hogg” Booke plays Annabel’s principal. Coincidence!? Yes!), we bear witness to squad-cars ending up on two wheels, or being smashed out-of-shape, or splitting in two when colliding with a dividing barrier. Perhaps whatever supernatural force swapped Ellen and Annabel’s minds also let physics take the day off on this fucked-up Friday?



I'm imagining your frame, every angle and every plane...

Director Gary Nelson made only this film and 1979’s The Black Hole for Disney (which is an infamous box office bomb that I happen to adore,) and seemed more at home directing for television. For whatever reason, Nelson chooses to draw every gag out to levels of tedium - whether it’s the endless police-car chase, or a scene of Ellen over-stuffing a washing machine full of rugs and detergent. Clocking in at a fairly brief 95 minutes, one wonders how short the film would’ve ended up had each scene been edited with an eye towards decent comic-timing. Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is that Nelson did the best with what he was given - and what he was given was a lousy screenplay.

Another happy readthrough...

The main issue with the script is, bewilderingly, the absence of emotional resonance. This is very odd - not only because this is typically Disney’s bread and butter, but also since the story’s premise all but demands it. Besides the briefest of scenes at the beginning, Ellen and Annabel have no interaction on-screen until the end of the “wacky water show” climax. The two of them decide to see what the other’s life is like, but spend most of the time having to react to a world of over-the-top idiots and a demanding asshat husband. I understand that this is meant to show them that the others’ lives aren’t easy - but if the mean-spirited goofiness had let up for just one moment of reflection, this point could’ve actually come across. Besides an admittedly sweet scene in which Annabel reconciles with her adoring little brother, any emotional growth is swapped out for comedic exhaustion. By the time the mother and daughter have come together at the film’s end (back in their correct bodies,) the inevitable “I love you’s” feel hollow - an unearned emotional payoff that leaves one wondering why the story never properly got off the ground.

Time for daddy-dearest's asshole intervention...

I don’t know. I feel like I may be a bit over-negative on the film (wouldn’t be the first time,) or that I may’ve liked it more had I watched this film at another time (I had to rush to get this out by Friday the 13th.) I’d always thought that Freaky Friday was a movie held in fairly high regard amongst fans - and Disney itself, seeing as how they’ve remade it three times (a 1995 TV-movie starring Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffmann; the well-known 2003 theatrical remake with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan; and a musical version with Heidi Blickenstaff and Cozi Zuehlsdorff - itself adapted from a Broadway adaptation - set to premiere on the Disney Channel later this summer.) Yet a quick perusal of the internet seems to show that I’m not alone in my consternation of the film. Besides a handful of the typically saccharine “A Family Classic!” and “Great Disney Entertainment!” comments you hear from both vacuous fansite reviews and blurb-hungry critics, many agree that the film is sadly dated, unfunny, badly written and poorly executed. Perhaps I’ll someday get around to looking at one of the other versions - which would be unusual for me, since I’ve never really been a fan of remakes. However, it’s hard to imagine Disney adapting the concept into a worse film, so maybe I’ll end up finding something to enjoy in one or more of their do-overs. After all, sometimes there’s no accounting for taste.