Freakier Friday (2025)

I've seen most of the other incarnations of the bodyswap premise in recent cinema (although I am overdue a rewatch of many of them). In the 1980s alone I was often enjoying a steady rotation of VHS favourites that included Freaky Friday (1976), Like Father Like Son (1987), Vice Versa (1988), and 18 Again! (1988). There were also the films that provided a slight variation on that main theme, whether that's Big (1988), All Of Me (1984), or, ummmmm, Dream A Little Dream (1989). The fun and anarchy of the idea has ensured that it regains popularity with film-makers every now and again. While not the earliest example, the fact that Vice Versa started off as a novel published in 1882, and a successful play starting a run just a year later, shows how enduring the concept is. I could list so many other films from recent years that worked with the central idea, some great and some not so great, but it's only necessary to consider the success of the 2003 Freaky Friday, the film that allowed Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis to have fun in the lead roles.

Which brings us to Freakier Friday. Curtis and Lohan are mother and daughter once again. They are Tess and Anna Coleman, respectively. Anna has her own teen daughter by now, Harper (Julia Butters). Harper ends up in an ongoing rivalry with a young British girl at her school named Lily (Sophia Hammons), which leads to Anna having to head in one day for a meeting with the Principal (played by X Mayo) and Lily's father, Eric (Manny Jacinto). Much to the dismay of Harper and Lily, Anna and Eric fall in love, eventually planning to marry. Tensions start to rise, which is when another bodyswap situation is created. Harper ends up in the body of Anna, Lily ends up in the body of Tess, and vice versa. There's detention to be navigated, a job that revolves around planning a concert for a big pop star, a distracting game of pickleball, and numerous other complications.

Written by Jordan Weiss, who had Elyse Hollander to help come up with the story, this is a rare feature directorial gig for Nisha Ganatra, who has been doing very good work on a number of different TV shows over the past decade or so. Maybe this will lead to Ganatra doing more features, but it's hard to say when so much of the joy comes from the cast appearing to have so much fun.

Alongside Lohan and Curtis, you get time for Mark Harmon and Chad Michael Murray to return, and there's even room for Pink Slip before the end credits roll (which have some very entertaining bloopers to guarantee you leave with a smile on your face). Despite the years that have passed since the previous film, everyone slips nice and easily into their old roles, and it's a major bonus that both Butters and Hammons are so good in their main roles. Jacinto doesn't have as much fun, but his job is to be earnest and increasingly bemused, while looking very handsome, and he does very well with that. 

The main problem this film has is that it feels more like a Disney Channel product than a proper movie at times. You get the constant bright colours throughout every scene, you get a very lively score and soundtrack selection, and the first act may have you feeling, as I did, that you might have been better off just waiting until it arrived on Disney's own streaming service. Things do improve though, in how it adds some rough edges and complexity to the situation and how things are presented on the way to a predictable and satisfying finale.

This is definitely going to please fans of the 2003 movie that it follows, but it also does a really good job of being updated and fresh enough for newcomers who may well find themselves with a new favourite bit of family entertainment. While I am not sure if I'll enjoy it as much on a rewatch, I am quite sure that I WILL rewatch it before I go back to any of the films that sequelize or remake Mean Girls. 

7/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Merry Gentlemen (2024)

Nothing says Christmas quite like a struggling small-town bar that ends up using some amateur male strippers to help turn fortunes around. Yes, that is the main premise of The Merry Gentlemen, the latest cheesy Christmas movie that I decided to watch this year. And scoff as you may, it wasn't too bad.

Britt Robertson plays Ashley, a young dancer who has had her career ended prematurely by the fact that she's now not quite as young as the limelight-stealing newcomers. So she finally heads back home to visit her parents (played by Michael Gross and Beth Broderick) and soon learns that their little bar, once a thriving hub of music and activity, has been in a slump for a while. A lot of money is owed, and the future isn't looking bright. Thankfully, a hunky local handyman (Luke, played by Chad Michael Murray), Ashley's fit brother-in-law (Rodger, played by Marc Anthony Samuel), a handsome bartender (Troy, played by Colt Prattes), and a dancing cabbie (Ricky, played by Hector David Jr.) are all roped in to Ashley's money-making idea: a choreographed show that features the men doing some very tame teasing. It's obvious that not everything will run smoothly though, and there may still be a chance for Ashley to be lured back to her full-time job in the big city.

As is so often the case, director Peter Sullivan has a large number of TV movies similar to this in his filmography, many of them co-created with Jeffrey Schenck (who is given a story credit here). He has also worked before with Marla Sokoloff, who wrote the screenplay for this and stars onscreen as Ashley's sister, Marie. Despite the opportunity for some extra raunch, everyone involved ensures that this remains cosy Christmas viewing, albeit with a few more abs on display than usual. They know the required story beats, and they hit every one.

Robertson is a decent lead, although I was a bit taken aback to see her in this (considering how much I have enjoyed her in some bigger movies, even if they, admittedly, didn't seem to perform as well as expected). She's appealing enough, and she can also do the occasional bit of clumsiness needed to keep her jostling up against our leading man. Murray is fine, delivering his now-softened-and-bland charm with a side-order of muscular torso, and Samuel, Prattes, and David Jr. all seem to be having fun. Gross is always a welcome sight, and Broderick pairs nicely with him, and it's great to see a small, but worthwhile, role for the charming Maxwell Caulfield (known to most people as either Rex Manning or the Cool Rider).

If you see the trailer for this and like the tone of it then you'll enjoy the film. It does what you expect. There are times when you can still sense the lower budget and rough edges (especially during "crowd" scenes that never feel too crowded), and you have to go with the flow of everything, rather than thinking about how ridiculous it is, but that's easier to do with a Christmas movie than it is with other types of movies. Good fun, and you can always follow it up with some proper raunchiness from the Magic Mike troupe.

6/10

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A Madea Christmas (2013)

In the interests of full disclosure I have to start this review by saying that this was my first Madea movie. I checked with a friend to find out if I could/should view this one without having seen any of the others and was given the okay (cheers Kieran). And I WILL check out other Madea movies. Not because this one was fantastic - it wasn't - but because I am now fascinated with seeing how Tyler Perry puts his creation into different scenarios.

Having first appeared in a number of stage plays (about half of which have since been adapted into movies), Madea is an elderly African American woman with a hellish attitude, brutal honesty, and the ability to overreact to many minor incidents while staying calm in the face of more emotional moments. This is what I have gleaned from one film anyway. And she is played by Tyler Perry.

Now that we both know a bit about the character, let's move on to the plot of the film. Madea ends up heading along with Eileen (Anna Maria Horsford) to visit Eileen's daughter, Lacey (Tika Sumpter). Lacey has to hide the fact that she is married to a lovely young white man (Conner, played by Eric Lively), pretending that he is her helper, and is also facing trouble at the school she works at, struggling to help fund local Christmas celebrations that will allow the kids to shine. One of those kids is extremely bright, much to the delight of his mother (Alicia Witt), although his father (Chad Michael Murray) has more immediate concerns about his farmland and struggle to make ends meet. Oh, and Conner's parents (Larry The Cable Guy and Kathy Najimy) are about to visit.

Yes, that was me trying to be brief with the plot description there, but there's a lot more to mention. The character played by Chad Michael Murray spent many years bullying the character played by Eric Lively. The funding for the local festivities comes with a number of strings attached. There's a random Ku Klux Klan meeting gag. And so much more.

Although I have no other experience with this character, or these plays and movies, A Madea Christmas gives me the distinct impression that Tyler Perry likes to stir plenty into the pot, all the while having his female creation ready to take centre stage whenever necessary. She doesn't necessarily solve any, or all, problems but she enables others to find their own solutions. And she does this by cutting through any bullshit, in between scenes that have her either throwing her weight around and cussing or spouting some tiresome homely wisdom.

The acting ranges from soap opera levels (Murray and Horsford can't overcome the poor writing) to the genuinely good (Perry, despite the broad comedy of the character he plays, is great in the lead role, and other very good turns come from Sumpter, Lively, Mr Cable Guy, Najimy, and Witt), and the direction is solid, if deliberately leaving aside any flash and sizzle in favour of simple camerawork and scene set-ups.

The big problem here is the script, veering between comedy to earnest drama back to comedy again like some drunk driver heading along an empty four-lane stretch of highway while searching for the packet of cigarettes he just dropped under his seat. One or two moments work while mixing the two - particularly a revelation and clearing of the air scene in the third act - but most make you feel as if you're watching two different movies that were dropped en route to the editing department and then just spliced together into one ill-judged hybrid.

So there you go. Feel free to take this review with a pinch of salt. And whenever I see my next Madea movie I can find out if my initial impressions were correct, or if her character is better suited to some of the other adventures that Tyler Perry has created for her.

5/10

Here you go, my American friends, buy it here. We have a lot less available to us here in the UK, which may not be a bad thing.

Christmas Cupid (2010)

If there is anyone acting in movies lately who is more annoying than Christina Milian then I will be very, very surprised because I almost didn't make it to the end of Christmas Cupid simply because of her annoying and smug presence. She may have been easier to tolerate if the movie had been better but I doubt it.

The plot is a horribly modernised, warped version of A Christmas Carol in which successful and driven Sloane Spencer (Milian) ends up visited by the spirit of prematurely deceased starlet Caitlin Quinn (Ashley Benson, just about the only likeable presence in the movie) and warned that she needs to change her ways. Sloane has been a bad friend, a bad daughter and a bad person to fall in love with so her mistakes are to be pointed out to her by three ex-boyfriends (one from her past, one of her recent dalliances and someone from her future that she hopes she doesn't recognise). So it's kinda like a cross between Ghosts Of Girlfriends Past and Scrooged without any of the appealing elements of either, which I know may not be a lot in the case of the former film namechecked there.

The lazy screenplay by Aury Wallington is lazily directed by Gil Junger and the result is a Christmas film that actually makes you want to say "humbug", at the very least.

Where to begin with Milian? I guess to be nice about it all I could say that I prefer her singing to her acting. And I absolutely hate her singing. She's not helped by the fact that she's playing a character that viewers will struggle to root for but a better actress might have somehow made things more palatable. I've already noted that Benson is about the only likeable presence and she's good fun throughout but her performance is just too little among too much dross to make the movie much better. Chad Michael Murray needs to have a serious word with his agent because going from One Tree Hill and the House Of Wax movie to this is NOT the career path to move along. Burgess Jenkins, Ryan Sypek, Ashley Johnson, Jackee Harry and Patrick Johnson, on the other hand, were all people I'd never heard of before so if they don't move on to anything better I won't be particularly emotional about it.

But it all comes back to Milian - the biggest stench in the middle of a big cloud of . . . . . . stench. If there's any justice in the world then she won't act in any other movie ever again, leaving a role for someone else to take on. But the world is often a crappy place and isn't overflowing with justice. Exhibit A, I give you Miss Milian's career.

One to avoid unless you happen to be a teenager who just loves both Ashley Benson and Christina Milian. But if that's the case I urge you to seek at least some therapy.

2/10

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