This week…
Freaky Friday (1976)
Jodie Foster, Barbara Harris, John Astin


I know what you’re thinking.

If I’ll sink so low that I’ll criticize a Disney film, what else might I be capable of?

Would I hide my great-grandmother’s dentures?

Would I send Canadian Tire money to hurricane victims?

Would I boo at the Special Olympics?

Now, before I get carried away, I’ve got my reasons for panning this film. This is one of those rare instances where the remake is vastly superior to the original.

Call me biased, but when you cast cougar-emeritus Jamie Lee Curtis, and a pre-skank Lindsay Lohan in a new version of Freaky Friday, you’re already golden in my books.

Sadly, we’re not talking about the remake today.

The original film’s mother/daughter pairing leaves me lukewarm. Barbara Harris played the mom, and she is certainly schwing-fully fine. Jodie Foster, not a girl, not yet a closet lesbian, left me, uh, schwing-less.

The story captures the post-hippy, hey-whatever way of life in the mid-seventies, minus the key parties, but with the decade’s painfully patriarchal structure. Keep in mind it’s an old Disney film, not exactly the place to go if you’re seeking strong, independent female role models.

Foster plays Annabel, a whisky-voiced tomboy who is an awesome water-skier, and the star of her school’s field hockey team. She also has a huge crush on the boy next door. We’ll just call him The Beard, and then never refer to him again.

Barbara Harris plays Ellen, a chain-smoking stay-at-home mom, who keeps the home fires burning while hubby Bill (John Astin) plys his trade at a big public relations firm.

We join the family at the start of a typical Friday. Annabel is hiding all of her Kristy McNicol pictures under her bed, the worse for wear after a sleepless night of frantic rug-tugging. Her mom urges her to get ready for school.

She rolls her eyes at that goddamn b*tch, then looks in the mirror, dark bags underlining the unending toll of living the lie, circa 1976.

Meanwhile, Mom is juggling fifteen chores as Dad sips coffee and reads the morning paper. He peers over the Business section long enough to add fifteen more chores to the list. You see, he’s got another really busy day ahead, sitting around with his boss sipping Johnnie Walker Red and talking stock options. On top of that, he has to spend the latter part of his day sipping Johnnie Walker Red, talking stock options, and watching The Aquacade, some kind of PR stunt he must have planned between hangovers.

Mom sighs and sparks another menthol, watching the smoke ring hit the ceiling. On her worst day, she never thought it would turn out like this. No more than an indentured servant, with an indifferent husband, and a resentful, disturbingly mannish daughter who hates her mother with a seething, husky fervor. Why me? she sobs, shaking her fists, reaching for the flask behind the toaster oven.

Meanwhile, Annabel is at a diner with her friend Becky, eating breakfast before her first class. L’il Prince(ss) is too good for cereal and toast in her own kitchen, apparently. She pours out some of her heart, unloading years of frustration over her inability to relate to her mother, carefully withholding her parallel frustration over her inability to take Becky in her arms, or at least to the prom. Still, that social taboo won’t keep her from getting a wee bit handsy with the “Beckster” behind the bleachers, I’m guessing. But that's for another movie, which would have been called Where The Boys Aren't, I think.

Simultaneously, Annabel and her mom recognize that Hell is the mother-daughter bond, and curse their miserable lives, causing them to change places!

For the next hour we are forced to endure an array of painfully forced hijinks and tomfoolery. In her mom’s body, Annabel pretty well f*cks up everything on her mom’s to do list, including her twice-weekly lube job from the neighbor who works out of his house, selling Amway and weed. In her daughter’s body, Mom pretty well alienates the entire school population, and without knowing why, yearns for a career as a phys-ed teacher at an all-girls boarding school.

The unfathomable Ruth Buzzi makes a cameo appearance, as a field hockey coach. My gonads crawl behind my pancreas, and do not emerge for twelve days.

Then there’s that damn music, that wild and wacky seventies score, which accompanies every trip, pratfall, car chase, and bludgeoning. Bludgeoning? Sorry, I was thinking about Ruth Buzzi again.

Every Disney film from the era broke down during the interminable hijinks montage. Think of all the character actors who had to play policemen, henchmen, grocers, and stagecoach drivers, all with that sh*t-eating grin on their face as they went and did something so incredibly stupid it should have earned them a place in the Darwin Hall of Fame.

We conclude at the Aquacade, a water-ski spectacle starring the amazing Annabel. Too bad her mom’s trapped in her body. I wonder if she can ski? Or will there be some loopy shenanigans as she fumbles her way across the water? Oh god, oh god, I don’t CARE, now please, where’s my 151-proof rum and my cheese and pickle sandwich? Daddy needs a good buzz if he's going to make it through the last ten minutes...

Meanwhile, her dad observes the spectacle from the hospitality tent, visibly lit and playing grab-ass with Dick Van Patten, as if there was anything else he could do.

Wackily, the Aquacade is a smashing success. Annabel and Mom switch back, each with a new appreciation for the other that probably lasts five minutes past the closing credits.

At the conclusion of this film, I wrapped a blanket over my head, then inhaled the vapors from my humidifier. Of course, instead of water and vap-o-rub, I filled it with ammonia, then fell into a coma for eight days, the better to forget the misery that was Freaky Friday.

Next @ SSC…
Potpourri…in other words, I don’t know yet! But I'm considering something from the David Hasselhoff ouevre, we'll see...