FREAKY FRIDAY (1976) ** There's something touching about Barbara Harris trying to imitate a teenager stuck in a grown woman's body. She's not a great actress, but she has a youthful look to her, it's her great opportunity and she's doing it for the children. Jodie Foster is smoother acting like her mother stuck in teenage land, but it's almost too smooth. There's a sense that Jodie is already something like that, wise well beyond her years. The concept's been played out before, and especially since, so its primary interest may be as a period piece. See how even Disney films felt obligated to make a mockery of policemen, look at the bell-bottomed pant suits...see how corporate stooge John Astin is presented as a societal aberration rather than a human blueprint, see the entire film degenerate (or is that elevate?) into a shambolic representation of teleological and exalted anarchy. I mean, no one even gets a parking ticket for any of this stuff.
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