Can I just say that I am tired of the body-switching thing? I've seen this a gazillion times before, most frequently on the Disney channel, who, oddly enough, produced this movie. It's just boring at this point. If you switch places with another person in your family or a friend or whoever, you'll learn to understand one another and then everything will be hunky-dory. This, however, is not (nor will it ever be) true because as soon as the next episode comes on, the body switchers are back to arguing and not getting along all over again. Seriously. What was the point of that? Why try to teach people that they should attempt to understand one another when you're just going to show it was a waste of time?
So dumb.
Either way, I did like this movie when it first came out. I had it on DVD and everything because I found Lindsay Lohan to be fairly amusing at the time. Parent Trap was cute. Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen was enjoyable, but mostly because I had read the book and could appreciate the movie. Mean Girls, the last movie I liked with her in it, is probably one of my all time favorite movies (lame choice, but I love it that much and watched it almost once a day, every day for an entire semester at college) because Tina Fey is a comedic genius.
Anyhow . . . Freaky Friday
Lindsay Lohan was a flat stereotype of an angsty teenager who is mad at everyone and thinks everything is unfair. It's true that she is mostly playing her mother most of the movie, however, she cannot rid herself of that teenage attitude. In fact, I would even argue that this attitude increases once she begins playing her mom. She turns her mom into the witchy, preppy girl Stacy who she hates so much. The worst part, however, is that at the beginning of the movie, Jamie Lee Curtis's character was a typical mom trying to do her best to care for her children while still trying to find happiness in her own life through remarrying after becoming a widower. She is nothing like the woman Lohan makes her out to be.
Jamie Lee Curtis, however, delivers a strong performance combining Lindsay's personality with her own as the mother. She removes Lohan's "everyone is out to get me and nothing is my fault" because she is no longer a teenager, but brings the free, independent, blunt spirit as an addition to her own identity as a mother in her daughter's body. So, really, she makes the movie worth watching.
Lohan's acting ability aside, the movie is cute. It's light; it's amusing; it's something easy meant strictly to entertain rather than offer anything deep or profound to make the audience think. And, though some might not agree, it's okay to be silly and not sophisticated / infused with "Culture." Escaping is okay sometimes.
No comments:
Post a Comment