FREAKY FRIDAY: Blu-ray (Walt Disney Pictures, 1976) Disney Club Exclusive
The hysteria
that was Haley Mills in the 1960's was
succeeded by the Walt Disney Studios active search for another prepubescent
enigma to continue the trend in the 1970's. After a few false starts, an heir
apparent did emerge, this time in the unlikeliest embodiment of tomboyish,
Jodie Foster – an undeniable talent, later to make an even greater splash in
films, entering super-stardom as an adult. It is always gratifying when a child
star transcends this first flourish of instant fame afforded them largely
because they are ‘cute’. So, many disappear completely from view once puberty
kicks in. But Foster has proven to be a uniquely gifted performer, far above
and beyond the many who try for as much, and, whose extraordinary talents have
only continued to ripen with age. For those fortunate enough to have lived as
long, we literally watched Jodie Foster mature on our movie screens, the public
scrutiny of a life lived in front of the camera worn exceptionally well by this
no-nonsense star. Foster has managed to skillfully elude the tabloids and
retain her reputation as a consummate pro.
It is interesting to compare and contrast Foster’s breakout performance
as Iris, the teenage prostitute in Martin Scorsese’s seminal melodrama, Taxi Driver, with the featherweight chameleon, Annabel Andrews, afflicted by the ultimate mind warp in Disney’s Freaky Friday (both films released months
apart in 1976). While for certain, Walt would not have approved of her more
adult foray, in hindsight, he would have likely been as passionate a proponent,
recognizing Foster’s intuitive talents to fashion and guide her career as yet
another beloved and wholesome moppet in his stable of stars.
Swiftly directed
by Gary Nelson, with its emphasis on the hokey rather than the sincere, Freaky Friday is based on Mary Rodgers’
popular teen fiction about a mother and daughter, each assuming the other has
the idyllic lifestyle. A cruel, though nevertheless educating twist of fate –
or bad karma, as it were – transposes the mother’s brain into the daughter’s
body and vice versa, leading to all sorts of misdirection, chaos and unintended
hilarity as both women discover the proverbial grass is not nearly as green on
the other side of the fence. Keeping with a time-honored Disney tradition, Freaky Friday is cast with some easily
identifiable screen and stage actors with already ‘built-in’ character traits
we have come to know and love; Broadway sensation, Barbara Harris (as Annabel’s
mama, Ellen), John Astin (TV’s Gomez, as her befuddled exec/father, Bill; Dick
Van Patten (Eight is Enough’s papa,
herein reconstituted as the snobbish and doubting, Harold Jennings), Alan
Oppenheimer (as his, and Bill’s boss, Mr. Joffert), Sorrell Booke (TV’s ‘Boss Hog’ as Principal Dilk), vintage
Fox contract player, Patsy Kelly (as caustic and boozy housekeeper, Mrs.
Schmauss) and finally, Ruth Buzzi (as the boorish ‘nameless’ coach of a rival
‘all-girl’s field hockey team). In hindsight, Disney Inc.’s live action output
from the 1970s is a real mixed bag; on the one hand, still invested in
big-budgeted movie musicals, like 1977’s Pete’s
Dragon, though increasingly relying on quick n’ dirty outings like Freaky Friday to sustain its balance
sheet.
Freaky Friday is hardly A-list from the Walt Disney Company.
Indeed, modestly budgeted at $5 million, Charles F Wheeler’s cinematography
possesses about as much big screen appeal as a run-of-the-mill half-hour Norman
Lear sitcom; Mary Rodgers’ screenplay, providing the bare minimum in character
development, merely to connect the dots in a perfunctory way and touch upon all
the goofy little nuances one does not readily think about before attempting to
assume another’s identity wholesale. So, after her crazy ‘brain transplant’ the
usually put together Ellen suddenly begins to unravel at the seams, possessing
no clue how to even stock a washing machine, much less drive a car. She tries
to goad neighbor boy, Boris Harris (Marc McClure) into getting behind the
wheel, but to no avail, and, passes off the duties of preparing a buffet for
Bill’s big marketing meeting on her seven-year-old son, Ben (Sparky Marcus),
the gentlest soul whom Annabel has rather cruelly nicknamed, ‘Ape Face’.
Like all Disney
features, Freaky Friday is a
morality tale that endeavors to teach a valuable lesson as Annabel and Ellen
come to terms with the virtues and vices inherent in each other’s lives. Ellen
gets Annabel’s braces off, has her hair done and borrows Bill’s credit card to
do a little shopping for clothes the real Annabel would never deign to wear.
Quickly, however, Ellen – in her daughter’s body – recognizes the girl she
views rather tragically as a tomboy is actually quite an accomplished athlete,
while Annabel acknowledges it takes far more effort, finesse and skill to play
the ‘piss elegant’ lady of the maison; devoted wife, mother, confidant and
confessor, juggling all these variables to make for a proficient and happy
home. Freaky Friday is hardly deep,
but it remains replete with insightful reflections for adults and teens to help
debunk and bridge the generation gap. The best that can be said of the picture
is that it remains effortlessly charming and rather naively wholesome
good-natured fun from start to finish, topped off by a crudely cobbled, and
unnecessary ‘comedy/action’ sequence that has Ellen (actually Annabel) driving
irresponsibly through the city streets with Ben and Boris in tow, determined to
reach the marina in time to save her mother (still in her body) from severely
injuring herself in the water-ski show Annabel is expected to perform for her
father’s business associates.
Immediately
following a bouncy main title sequence, animated and set to Joel Hirschhorn and
Al Kasha’s largely forgettable, ‘I’d Like
to Be You for a Day’, Freaky Friday
embarks upon setting up its tidy little tale of middle class domesticity. In
this ‘almost perfect’ world, Ellen and her daughter are in a chronic flux of
misunderstanding. Ellen wants Annabel to behave more like a young lady. But
Annabel is devoted to her sports and could not give a hoot how she looks.
Ascribing to the cliché that teenagers, by their very definition, are not fit
for polite society, both Ellen and Annabel are in for a very rude awakening as
each separately daydream about taking on the role of the other, on Friday the
13th no less. Their wish granted, Annabel – now implanted with
Ellen’s brain, quickly realizes she is very much unable to keep up with the
interests of her daughter’s contemporaries, Hilary Miller (Shelly Jutner),
Bambi (Charlene Tilton) and Jo-Jo (Lori Rutherford). Interestingly, neither
Ellen nor Annabel try to get in contact with one another, presumably, recognizing
what has happened and determined to enjoy the switch while it lasts.
Annabel, as
Ellen decides to indulge in a little creative make-up/makeover, adding undue
rouge, lipstick and phony eyelashes with sabotaging results. But this is mere
child’s play when considering the mockery Annabel makes of basic household chores:
the laundry, as example (adding waaay to much detergent and overloading the
machine) or basic car repair, buying groceries and managing the slate of carpet
and dry cleaners who arrive on cue.
Firing the brittle Mrs. Schmauss after she makes some backhanded crack
about Annabel being spoiled, Ellen (as Annabel) is incapable of even looking
after the family’s beloved Basset Hound, Max. To make matters worse, Bill saddles
his wife with preparing a spread for twenty-five after his company’s caterer
backs out of a planned event at the last minute. Panicky, Annabel enlists
Boris, a teenager on whom she harbors a crush (but who increasingly begins to
find ‘Ellen’ attractive instead) to babysit Ben and prepare a chocolate mousse
and turkey dinner. Too bad for all, the boys forget to put the lid on the
blender and Ellen, having stepped out only for a brief errand, returns to
discover the turkey burnt to a crisp.
In the course of
these preposterous misfires, Annabel (as Ellen) develops a newfound respect for
her baby brother. As Ben has confided in his mother that he thinks his big
sister is the greatest person alive, Annabel begins to rethink the way she has
marginalized his importance in her life thus far. Meanwhile, Ellen (as Annabel)
immerses herself in the rigors of high school. What she quickly realizes is
that Annabel’s extracurricular activities far exceed her level of comprehension.
A parent/teacher interview with Annabel’s English teacher, Miss McGuirk (Pat
Carroll) and Principal Dilk alerts Annabel to the fact the faculty truly
believes in her smarts; something Annabel has virtually neglected in favor of
her sports. Now Ellen, as Annabel, is grotesquely defeated in her all-girl’s
field hockey finals, incurring the disappointment of her teammates, who were
counting on Annabel as their most valuable player. Worse, she effectively ruins
all her friends’ final assignments in photography class by accidentally turning
on the lights in the dark room. Desperate to escape this academic nightmare, Annabel
reports to Bill’s office to borrow his credit cards. After all, today is the day
the braces on her teeth come off. Perhaps, it is also time for a fashion
makeover. Inadvertently, Annabel (still, Ellen) meets Bill’s sultry secretary,
Lucille Gibbons (Brooke Mills) whom she quickly sets about to unsettle in her
ambitions by suggesting Bill is a devoted family man who would never look at
another woman, much less contemplate an affair.
Having achieved
Annabel’s physical makeover, Ellen is quite unaware her daughter is scheduled
to perform in a water ski spectacle for Bill’s bosses. Horded into the back of
a waiting van by the rest of the water-skiers, Annabel makes every attempt to
wangle her way out of this duty. Meanwhile, Ellen (still, Annabel) is hurriedly
plowing through the streets with Boris, Ben and her burnt turkey in tow; her
haphazard driving drawing undue attention. The police make chase, but, in
typical Disney-esque fashion, they prove more the Keystone Cops than
competently positioned LAPD Highway Patrol. Somewhere between home and the
marina, Ellen and Annabel wish for their own bodies back. As before, the
exchange is granted, only now Ellen, in her black gown, is on waterskies and
Annabel, behind the wheel of the family’s Volkswagen Beatle. Shocked and
bewildered by the sight of his wife haplessly sailing around the lake, Bill
tries to run interference with his boss, Mr. Joffert and his snooty assistant,
Mr. Jennings who, along with a select group of invited guests, are surveying
the aquacade from a floating pontoon in the middle of the lake.
Eventually,
Annabel, Boris and Ben arrive at the dock, its support beam knocked out by
Ellen’s skis that have already punctured one of the air-filled buoys on the
pontoon. Taking to the skies on a hand-glider, Ellen somehow manages to navigate over
to the half-submerged family’ car; pulled to safety by Annabel and Boris as
Bill, and the rest of the guests on the pontoon, sink beneath the waves from
the fatal puncture earlier inflicted. Sometime later, Ellen and Annabel remain
very cagey about not explaining anything to Bill who is decidedly confused over
what has transpired. Annabel accepts Boris’ invitation to go out for pizza, but
also elects to take Ben along. Unable to comprehend his father’s upset, Ben
informs Bill that if only he could assume his identity for one day he would
surely know how to live a more fulfilling life. Bill agrees. If he could become
Ben, life would be a whole lot easier. Hence, we end on the presumption another
miraculous metamorphosis, this one between father and son, is about to take
place.
Freaky Friday is an effortlessly appealing popcorn muncher. As a ‘coming of age’ flick, it passes the time
without ever delving too deeply into the real trials and tribulations ‘parents with teenagers’ or ‘teenagers with parents’ undoubtedly
share. The newfound respect Ellen and Annabel gleans from their day-long ordeal
is marginally rewarding, though more so because we can see some sort of brain
activity going on beneath Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster’s facades. Neither
gets any real help here from the screenplay, so it is left up to the actresses
to convey depth. Each, on occasion, does, elevating their performances beyond
the rank cardboard cutouts that virtually populate the rest of the picture. I
get it. Freaky Friday is not a
melodrama but a souffle from the Disney stable at a time when their live-action
feature output had dwindled to all but a trickle – the company in transition
(or perhaps, decline) and interested in making movies never to strain the
intellect…only their own credibility as purveyors of ‘family entertainment’. But really, Freaky Friday plays much more like a Disney Sunday Movie rather
than a bona fide feature in the best tradition from Walt’s illustrious past.
Freaky Friday has found its way to Blu-ray via Disney’s Exclusive
Club. What this means for anyone outside of the U.S. is it is virtually off
limits except via third-party vendors on Amazon.com and retailing for triple
the cost incurred as a Disney Inc. member.
I suppose we ought to be grateful the ‘Exclusive Club’ Blu-ray releases
are back on – after an interminable hiatus that threatened to leave a good many
vintage catalog in limbo. The good news for fans of Freaky Friday is that this 1080p offering sports some impressively vibrant
color. A good deal of Freaky Friday’s
photo-chemical and matte SFX shots, depicting Ellen on water skis and Annabel
driving the family car, suffer from intermittent amplification of grain and
matte work that is transparently obvious, with some built-in color fading to
boot. Outside of these SFX inserts, image quality is uniformly vibrant, with
oodles of fine detail and excellent contrast. The DTS 2.0 is threadbare at
best, with thin-sounding dialogue and a general cacophony of cluttered noise
during action scenes, bearing no aural separation. I suspect this is par for
the course of the original soundtrack. It’s adequate…though just barely. The
only extra that was available on the DVD release was a brief featurette in
which the usually absent Ms. Foster waxed rather affectionately about her
Disney days. But we do not get even this on the Blu-ray. Like all Disney
‘exclusives’ this is a movie-only release. The ‘Mouse House’ continues to slip
in their 1080p output. Bottom line: the visuals look great. The sound is barely
a middling effort. Judge and buy accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
4
EXTRAS
0
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