Starring Cozi Zuehldorff, Heidi Blickenstaff, Jason Maybaum, and Alex Desert
Directed by Steve Carr
Music by Tom Kitt; Lyrics by Brian Yorkay
Freaky Friday has a long history at Disney. The original book was written in 1972 by Mary Rodgers, who also did the music for Once Upon a Mattress. It became a non-musical film three times, most recently and successfully in 2003 with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as the mother and daughter who learn to appreciate each other when they magically switch bodies for the day. How does the Disney Channel's retelling fare? Let's begin on a hectic morning with Ellie Blake (Zuehldorff) and her friends as they discuss her disapproval of her uptight mother Katherine's (Blickenstaff) wedding and find out...
The Story: Ellie's been angry ever since her father died. She thinks her mother is trying to replace him with her fiancée Mike (Desert) and wans her to forget him. Katherine just wants her wedding to be photographed by a national magazine, so she can sell the article and save their home. Ellie's livid when her magic-obsessed brother Fletcher (Maybaum) runs off with an hourglass her father gave her. It was one of a pair that he also gave her mother. She's even angrier when she finds out her mother sold the other hourglass to finance her current catering business.
This becomes an even bigger problem when they're fighting while holding the hourglass and magically switch bodies. Now Katherine has to navigate the ins and outs of high school, and Katherine has to raise Fletcher and figure out how to deal with the wedding. They think it'll be a piece of cake. It's far from it. Ellie doesn't have the patience to deal with Fletcher or the wedding planners, and Katherine can't handle the snobbish school bully Savannah (Dara Renee) and her crush on Adam (Ricky He). Turns out Adam's in charge of "The Hunt," a school-wide scavenger hunt. Katherine convinces him to add the hourglass to the list. Now they have to find that hourglass before the wedding, and teach mother and daughter a lesson in how hard it is to walk in another person's sneakers or high heels in the process.
The Song and Dance: If nothing else, the hourglass is a lot less stereotypical than the fortune cookies that switched mother and daughter in the 2003 version and makes more sense than them just waking up in each other's bodies in the book and original 1976 film. There's some nice dance ensembles here, notably "Oh Biology" and the big wedding finale. Some of the supporting characters are surprisingly well-fleshed out. I like Ellie's two best friends (who are a lot more relatable than she is), and for once, both teen and adult love interests come off as actual characters and not merely something to moon over. Adam even figures heavily into "the Hunt" part of the plot.
Favorite Number: We start out with a fairly creative animated credits sequence depicting how Ellie feels in her mother's shadow, "What It's Like to Be Me." "Just One Day" has a frustrated Ellie complaining about how her mother doesn't understand her, and Katherine trying to deal with everything and just wanting to spend more time with her family. "I Got This" has the two claiming they can easily handle the other's life, because, hey, how hard can it be to attend high school and run a catering business?
Katherine's now-teenage hormones has her thinking "Oh, Biology!" as the rest of her class dances along when she spies Adam for the first time. Ellie sadly explains to her brother, who admires her mother, that "Parents Lie," but they do it to protect their offspring. "Today and Every Day" is mother and daughter worrying they're stuck as an adult and a teen forever. The movie ends with a rather random but nicely-choreographed group dance routine at the wedding reception to "At Last It's Me."
Trivia: This is the first Disney Channel musical to be based after one of Disney's stage productions. The stage Freaky Friday has played regional theaters, but has yet to try Broadway.
What I Don't Like: Frankly, neither mother nor daughter are terribly pleasant or fun to be around, no matter whose bodies they're in. Katherine is a whiny witch who should have been a lot more respectful of her daughter's grief; Ellie is a spoiled, mouthy brat. You never feel any chemistry between the two or like they're actually mother and daughter, making their overwrought reconnection at the wedding in the finale fake and tacked-on. The "Oh Biology!" number comes off as more creepy than amusing despite the good dancing, what with Katherine being in her daughter's body and lusting after her teenaged crush. The songs are dull and silly, and the wedding dance party ending comes out of nowhere and has nothing to do with anything.
Oh, and I want to hear more about "The Hunt." That honestly looks like fun. I'm surprised more schools don't do something similar. It's a heck of a lot interesting than Katherine's dropped-in-from-nowhere "we gotta save our house with this wedding" plot.
The Big Finale: Dull music and obnoxious leads makes this my least-favorite Disney Channel musical to date. No wonder the stage Freaky Friday hasn't made it to Broadway. Hopefully, it's a lot more fun than this.
Home Media: Easily found on DVD and streaming; Disney Plus has it with a subscription.
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