Remake Madness: Good vs. Evil
While we’re on the L.Lo tip and since next Friday is a 13th, it’s only fitting that we discuss an otherwise pyrotechnic movie that was unspeakably butchered by the recent remake: Freaky Friday.
The original Freaky Friday, circa 1976, starring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris as Annabel and Ellen Andrews, can do no wrong by me. This movie is a classic and there’s rarely a time when I’m not down for a viewing. It absolutely reeks of that special heartwarming simplicity Disney possessed in the seventies, complete with a quirky musical backdrop and sans modernized neuroses.
The Freaky Friday of 2003, starring Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, on the other hand, is so riddled with run of the mill dimestore neuroticisms of the “updated version” variety, that it’s blatantly apparent the changes were made strictly for the sake of trying to cash in on a great film for a second time without plagiarizing the original predecessor and thereby hooking the 25 years later audience. It so desperately tries to be of the oh-so-overhauled PC nuclear family persuasion that it’s quite sickening.
The “writers” (the fact that there’s more than one should immediately tell you something) totally dropped the awkward tomboy with crush on nerdy older neighbor boy shtick and went for the angsty rocker brat with crush on older high school TA? Seriously, WTF? Where’s the fun in that?
The worst part is that they totally lost the relationship between Annabel (or “Anna” in the remake, if you will) and her brother. I think something went terribly wrong if I ended up hating the character I’m supposed to sympathize with and like.
Just for fun (because we at Pop Whore love fun) let’s check off some of the revolting remake carnage:
Single psychiatrist mom? Check.
Random and totally worthless filler characters? Check.
Grotesque product placement? Check.
Teen actress singing “original” song as credits roll? Check.
Chad Michael Murray? Ew. I mean, check.
And so it goes...ad nauseum, ad infinitum. A word to the wise...skip the remake! Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.
Oh yeah...and if they so much as go near “Candleshoe,” they’re fucking dead!
posted by Eti @ 9:46 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I watched the original Freaky Friday on the Disney Channel when I was probably about 9. At that time, the notion of "cable" primarily meant the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, since (a) they didn't have the 227 channels they do today and (b) I wasn't allowed to watch MTV. (I blame my hefty criminal record on the latter. When I learned that there was a hilarious rap group called the "Fat Boys" but I would never be able to witness the brilliance of their videos, I set out on the first of twenty-two murder sprees I was to eventually carry out.)
Anyway. I mainly remember the field hockey scene, the scene where adultized Jodie gets aggro in the lunchline, and the scene where childized Barbara attempts to do laundry. I'm not sure I got all the way through the movie; the intensity of the material might have forced me to switch over to Danger Mouse halfway through.
Meanwhile, Candleshoe lives in my memory as one of the movies we 4th graders were brought together to watch in the auditorium (also the cafeteria) right before Christmas break. (I can't say the more PC "winter break" because we also got a week off in February every year.) I mainly remember sitting there impatiently wondering when it would be over so I could go home and open presents.
Next time: "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and "Escape From Witch Mountain"
You watched Danger Mouse?? "Here I come to save the DAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!"
Did you ever see Count Duckula? About the vampire duck who happens to be a vegetarian? I think T told me about a Brazilian novella where there's a vampire who is allergic to blood....hmmmm....comically flawed vampires may be a genre we need to further investigate.
I must contradict the memory of the esteemed Pop Whore writer above. If *I* saw the original (and wonderful, right on, Eti!!) FF on more than one occasion, it is for sure that I was not watching it alone!! Therefore, he saw it more than once as well, and should have a clearer recollection of it. Barbara H and Jodi F were so great, and the only comparable film is the male version w/Fred S and Judge R, "Vise Versa"--another all time favorite of the parent-child switch genre!!
BTW, Myasorubka, did Danger Mouse (whom I do not know) rip off Mighty Mouse? I see a lawsuit in his future...
And you didn't stop to consider that at least one of those times might have been before I was born, or in any case before I would have had the full capacity to comprehend and remember narrative films?
Freaky Friday = 1976
Me = 1978
Post a Comment
<< Home