Belated film reviews: Freaky Friday

I remember being about thirteen and seeing the trailer for Freaky Friday somewhere, probably on television. They used to show film trailers every once in a while, before and after other films were aired. It ticked every possible box for baby me.

I have loved Lindsay Lohan ever since I saw her portray both Hallie and Annie in The Parent Trap. I was gifted the videotape of it and watched it twice a day during the school holidays. I tried to memorise the handshake. I bought metallic blue nail polish because of Hallie. I was obsessed with it, and it may have been the catalyst of the ten years I subsequently spent wanting ginger hair.

It was a film that looked fun.

But most importantly, at thirteen, I was just starting what can only be called my everlasting emo phase, even though, at this point, it has been seventeen years, and it's beyond being a phase. It was the not yet emo part that was the phase. I discovered pop-punk at the age of 8, when my brother bought a copy of The Offspring's Americana, and I grew up on rock and metal. I was born for this. At thirteen, my world was rocked by a thirty-second extract of Evanescence's Bring Me To Life on a chart show, which led to years of playing Fallen on loop on family days out, and I committed to the music of the loud, angsty persuasion. The Freaky Friday soundtrack is a perfect ode to pop-punk and punk-rock. Of course, I was bound to love this film.

I couldn't go see Freaky Friday at the cinema because I grew up in France, and films like it were never popular here. It didn't have anyone extremely famous for our side of the world (I doubt the general public knew either Jamie Lee Curtis or Lindsay Lohan, and Mark Harmon, who we only know as "the guy from NCIS," wouldn't have been enough to bring in the masses.) It is a Disney Channel film and, as French people, we love nothing more than to criticise everything America does, like Disney Channel. It was a comedy for teenagers, but it didn't have crass, lewd humour like American Pie or Scary Movie, the big teenage hits of the time. So, it didn't stay in the local cinema long enough for me to see it. Also, my friends and I used to go to the cinema on Sunday mornings because tickets were cheaper than the rest of the week, but the film selection was limited, and thus, I kissed Freaky Friday goodbye - for now.

I was gifted the DVD a little later on, and I immediately adored it. It was so worth the wait for me. Freaky Friday became one of my staples, the kind of film I could watch on loop and not get bored of. Seventeen years down the line, God, I'm ancient, and still not bored of it. It still makes me laugh, and I still love every minute of it.

Freaky Friday has been rebooted a few times, and the 2003 edition, the one starring Lindsay Lohan as Anna, the teenage girl in the rock band, and Jamie Lee Curtis as Tess, the psychologist mum who answers everything with "How do you feel about this?", is the third one. The first and second ones, which I haven't seen, date back to the seventies and the nineties. The fourth one, released in 2018, was an interesting experience. I watched it on a flight back from Los Angeles and, on paper, it has everything I love. I love the plot! It was a musical! I should have loved this! But it completely fell flat for me.

The 2003 version centers around Anna Coleman, a rebellious teenager who is very much into punk-rock and doesn't get along with her mother, brother, popular girls at school, and teachers. She screams that her mother is ruining her life approximately once an hour, constantly bickers with her brother, and ends up in detention every day. Her mother, Tess, is a high-flying psychologist who is just releasing her second book. She is also two days away from remarrying and under constant stress. She is the queen of multi-tasking and owns about seventy-two cell phones and pagers. The pair could not be more different.

The pressure on both our leading ladies is heightened on this seemingly ordinary Thursday. Anna finds herself in detention twice, once after an unfortunate PE class, and once because she claps back at her English teacher. He even interrupts her when she finally talks to her crush, Jake, portrayed by Chad Michael Murray. When I was a teenager, Chad Michael Murray was everyone's dreamboat, the boy we all fancied. He played some sort of perfect teenage heartthrob in every film or show he was in. He was sweet and athletic Austin Ames in A Cinderella Story. He was clever and emotional Lucas Scott in One Tree Hill.

And he was Jake, the guy with the long hair, the perfect music taste, and just the right amount of rebellion in him in Freaky Friday.

At the end of the day, Anna wants nothing more than to wind down with her band, Pink Slip, but her younger brother Harry has other plans, and he has stormed in her door-less bedroom to read her diary with his friends. (And I know the point of the film is for the mum and the daughter to better understand themselves, but Anna did have a point in claiming Harry was the favourite. That kid got away with murder.) After yet another screaming match, Anna finds her way to the garage and Pink Slip rehearses in what is one of my favourite musical moments of any film, EVER. Christina Vidal's Take Me Away, is an absolutely brilliant pop-punk banger, performed to perfection by a band being portrayed as not-yet-out of their garage phase. (Also, Christina Vidal gets a part in the film as Maddie, Anna's friend and lead singer of Pink Slip, and I love that she gets to perform her own song.)

After Tess interrupts the rehearsal, Pink Slip finds out they have been shortlisted to perform at a battle of the bands at the House Of Blues, in Los Angeles. The show clashes with Tess's rehearsal dinner, but Anna promises to do her best to be here. The Colemans head to the Chinese restaurant and, after arguing about the show and ruining Anna's life, mother and daughter are given a fortune cookie by the owner's mother, who mumbles something in Chinese and leaves them to read the fortune. An earthquake only the two of them feel rocks the restaurant and, at midnight on the dot, Tess and Anna switch bodies for one hell of a freaky Friday.

The scenes during which Anna and Tess are trying to figure the situation out and come up with a plan to switch bodies again are still hilarious to me. I love watching Anna, in her mother's body, freaking out because she "looks like the crypt keeper." I love them trying to run into each other. I love the line "These are so cute!" "Yeah, if you're selling Bibles!" while they're getting dressed. (Cream trousers and light blue shirt combo used to be my old work uniform, apparently chosen because it was a big thing in old school Burbank, California, even though I used to work in Watford, England, and they will always be associated in my brain.) Anna and Tess decide to replace each other for the morning. Tess in Anna's body has to endure a half-day of high school, and Anna as Tess will be meeting patients while trying to say nothing at all.

Obviously, nothing goes according to plan. Anna gives her mother a makeover (with the montage set to Lillix's What I Like About You- ICONIC), misses appointments, and cancels her caterer at the wedding because no one wants to eat halibut. (I wouldn't.) Tess tries to make up with her daughter's sworn enemy Stacey Hinkhouse and messes things up with Jake. But, at least, she figures out what the issue is with Mr. Bates. He's just very bitter because Tess turned him down for prom, and he's taking it out on her daughter. (Also, speaking of Mr. Bates, he is portrayed by Stephen Tobolowsky, who plays academic personnel in absolutely everything, from The Goldbergs to Glee. I swear this man is in everything I watch- but to me, he'll always be Principal Ball, first and foremost.)

Tess and Anna head to the Chinese restaurant to get back to normal, but Pei-Pei informs them that they only have to make the fortune come true. Ah, yes. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Seeing as they don't remember the fortune just now, they endure one afternoon in each other's body. Tess, as Anna, sits her honour's test and is tricked by Stacey and ends up in detention. Jake helps her finish the test, but she messes it up with him again when she erases every answer on Stacey's test to write "I'm stupid!" on it instead. (Oh, the innocence of early-2000s pranks!) Anna, as Tess, makes an appearance on a talk show for a book she knows nothing about, and which title she doesn't even understand. After a rocking performance, crowned by some crowdsurfing, that has nothing to do with the book, Tess runs away and ends up having coffee with Jake. They bond about music, he develops a crush on her, and gives her a ride home on his motorbike? This results in yet another iconic scene: Chad Michael Murray butchering the Bowling For Soup cover of Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time underneath the Colemans' windows. That botched-up high note is nothing short of classic.

Anna and Tess have to pretend even further and head to the rehearsal dinner together. Jake, still crushing on Anna (but he thinks it's Tess), infiltrates the dinner and tries his luck, because what better place to get the girl than a celebration of her own wedding. (There's sadly always a downside to every Chad Michael Murray character, ever.) Maddie and Peg, Anna's bandmates, try to kidnap her to perform at the battle of the bands. Ryan, her stepfather, allows her to go, she does, but the hiccup is that Tess doesn't have her daughter's musical talent and has very much underestimated just how good she was. She is saved by Anna who, backstage, in her mother's body, finds a guitar and performs the Take Me Away solo. Again, we have here one of my favourite music scenes in any film, ever. It's not just because the song blows my mind every single time. It's because it starts like a trainwreck, and you think it's over for Anna and Pink Slip, but the day is saved, and it's so ridiculoulsy joyous to watch, over and over again.

Tess and Anna run back to the rehearsal dinner, and they plan on postponing the wedding, seeing as they are still stuck in each other's bodies. Anna, as Tess, gives an emotional and heartfelt speech, and it's the key to unlocking the fortune. The pair finally exchange bodies in an earthquake everyone feels, this time around, and all is well in the world again. Tess and Anna have learnt to understand each other better. Tess remembers how stressful it truly is to be a teenager, and she is aware of how much energy, work, and talent go into her daughter's music. Anna sees how complicated and demanding her mother's life is, and how she's just trying to navigate being a working mum who's finally happy again after losing her husband. Tess gets married, Jake and Anna get together, and Pink Slip perform Lindsay Lohan's Ultimate at the wedding. The perfect ending.

The film was everything I wanted as a teenage girl, and, as an adult, I still love it for all the same reasons. I remember how, after watching it for the first time, I wanted to look exactly like Lindsay Lohan. I never got the blonde highlights, though I still think they're rad as hell, but I tried dressing the same. I was a teenager, still trying to figure out things such as style, physical appearance, the changes in my body, what I wanted to look like, and who I wanted to be, and, at thirteen, it was definitely something along the lines of Anna Coleman in Freaky Friday. Seventeen years later, you couldn't pay me enough to wear low-waisted trousers, but I still love those blonde highlights and wide-legged green pants. I still want to be as cool as Anna.

The soundtrack has aged fantastically well, and I'm not only saying it because I am still heavily into pop-punk, punk-rock, and music that generally makes a lot of noise. It's just that every song on it is great. I think it's a shame that Lindsay Lohan's musical career never really took off because Ultimate was one hell of a song, and I wish we had got a full pop-punk album from her. The soundtrack, partially present on streaming services, includes some artists I still love to this day, such as Simple Plan, Andrew W.K, Bowling For Soup, and American Hi-Fi. It's energetic, fast, loud, and perfect to match the pace of the film. I miss rock music being represented in the mainstream, through more than just old school bands, and I would love nothing more than a kickass modern-day teenage comedy with current pop-punk songs on it.

Since the first time I saw the film, I visited Los Angeles and, upon planning my trip, I looked up some film sets I could see for free, outside of Universal Studios. The House of Blues where Pink Slip play the Wango Tango show doesn't exist anymore but, through seeing State Champs at a different House of Blues, in Anaheim, I still felt like I was living my teenage girl dream. The façade of the Chinese restaurant is in Chinatown, even though the building hosts a homeware store. The hotel where Tess and Ryan are having their rehearsal dinner is on the Sunset Strip, and I found it while walking around, waiting for the doors of Roxy to open for the night. So, basically, I, too, walked down a few blocks from the hotel and found a rock show. It wasn't me playing, and I almost got kicked out because crowdsurfing seemed to be frowned upon, but it was still pretty awesome.

Freaky Friday has shaped a part of my personality, has given something tangible to the girl I wanted to become, and I still adore it unconditionally. It's not nostalgia. It's not a film I used to love when I was at school. It's a film I love, plain and simple.