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Freaky Friday

Movie Freaky Friday Director Mark Waters Cast Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Harold Gould, Mark Harmon

By Subhash K Jha

Oh well, at least they try! There isn�t much to be said about this comedy of ancestral errors and filial fallacy where mom Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her difficult daughter Anna (Lindsay Lohan) exchange "souls". Not much of that human attribute is discernible in this wow-is-well-that-trends-well fluffy comedy. Director Mark Waters has earlier made two witless comedies Head Over Heels and The House Of Yes. So we know exactly what to expect from his in this guffawing sojourn into the heart of domestic laughter. Fortunately for the director, Jamie Lee Curtis serves as the perfect bridge over troubled Waters. She has done great comedy earlier specially in A Fish Called Wanda and True Lies where she even performed a striptease before the horrified Arnold Schwarnegger. Here in Freaky Friday she�s expected to perform a striptease of another kind. Exchanging body and soul with her screen-daughter Curtis tries to inject conviction in a lacklustre script which strips every characters of gravity to make them dangle mid-air with looming uncertainty. But the film lacks the inbuilt credibility of Penny Marshall�s Big where Tom Hanks "became" a 13- year old. Being her own daughter doesn�t become Jamie Lee Curtis. Though she tries hard to imbibe the mannerisms of her screen-daughter(Parent Trap child-star Lindsay Lohan, now a good-looking 16-year old) the poor material and the surface treatment washes away the serious undercurrents of the generation-gap story. How appropriate it would have been if Jodie Foster who had played the truant rebellious daughter in the 1977 original version of the story was cast as the mother. Much of the story here moves without that core of inner excitement which made the original film hiss and crackle with a wicked witticism. Much of the humour in this remake hinges on the total disregard for nuances. The characters live on the broad side of life. The critical soul transference falls short of expectation. The two actresses work well together but don�t get into each other�s skin, as required by the plot. On the sunny side there are some great rock �n� roll tracks carpeting the clamorous soundtrack. These keep you regaled as the two gals at the forefront whoop it up to their hearts� content.