Review of Freaky Friday (2018) by Max L — 20 Aug 2018

Just a warning, this is going to be SUPER long, because god, I hate this movie with the fiery passion of a thousand suns in hell. Even by DCOM standards this movie sucks. The music is generic and boring when it's not obnoxious, nothing is written or acted with any realism with few exceptions, the tone is all over the place and the dynamics of the body switch in this incarnation of the story don't make as much sense.

The body switch itself happens way too early in the story for the audience to really know the characters as themselves, so it gets a little confusing when the mother and daughter do some things later on because their characters haven't been developed well enough. And as for the switch itself, the way it comes about is so contrived. I won't get into the specifics, but it's really dumb. And the way it's reversed at the end is even dumber.

Pretty much any scene with the daughter in the mom's body is either cringey beyond belief or really mean-spirited. The character crosses the line from frustrating teenager to horrible person and completely unreasonable b**ch when the switch happens. Heidi Blickenstaff, who plays the mother, does fine in the scenes as the mother, but as the daughter in the mom's body she is completely ridiculous and overacts to the point of being comical, including the "dramatic" scenes. She's a good singer, but I think that her performance would work better on a stage where she has to exaggerate to play to the back row (this movie is adapted from a stage play where she played the same role).

As for the mother's scenes in the daughter's body... oh boy. One of the cringiest scenes in the movie (and, frankly, any movie) occurs when the mom, in the daughter's body, goes to biology class and sees the daughter's boy crush and she... has a thing for him. All of this takes place during a song called "Oh Biology" (which is basically the reproduction song from Grease 2 without any of the camp value) where there is a line that says, I kid you not, "Why can't my grown-up brain control my teenage parts?". This is a 40-something year old woman expressing that she can't control her raging hormones that have the hots for a teenager half her age. Anyway, It's creepy and I hate it.

Also, the bully girl character who is a staple of this story is not realized well at ALL. First of all, she's a big sassy black girl, which kind of rubs me the wrong way, and second, there really isn't an interesting dynamic between her and the daughter character, and their conflict doesn't pay off in any way. Like, the bully doesn't get a big comeuppance or a redemption moment in any way, and neither the daughter or the mother as the daughter do anything to get back at her or anything, she's just kind of there for no reason. And she's not even funny. I could forgive her being superfluous if she was at least entertaining but she's not. Just a run-of-the-mill jerk that throws weak insults once in a while.

So, is there ANYTHING salvageable in this dumpster fire of a movie? Well, yes, there are a few things that work. Jason Maybaum as the little brother is fairly enjoyable (even though his existence is kind of superfluous). He has a decent and kind of funny dynamic with the daughter (one of the few things that's developed decently in the exposition), and he gets a few good jokes. And his dramatic acting is pretty good too, even though the scenes themselves are contrived and horribly written, he's fine IN them. Also, Cozi Zuehlsdorff as the daughter is quite likeable. Even though she's given some really corny lines as the mother, she sells them as well as she can. And she's a pretty good singer. Again, the musical material she has to work with is AWFUL (with the exception of the finale song, which is ok), but she does have a good voice and she gets a laugh once in a while.

I'm sorry this is so freaking long, but I had to. This movie is awful. I even went in not really knowing what to expect except typical DCOM cheesiness, and what we have is cringey, creepy, mean, lazily-written, musically-lifeless garbage. I hope these actors find something better to put their time and energy into, because they deserve better. And as for Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey who composed the music for Next to Normal, one of the most critically acclaimed, mature and sophisticated musicals of the 21st century, they should be ashamed of themselves for this. Yes, I would go that far. Avoid this movie. For your own sake. And may we all eventually forget its existence.