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 Gray Man (2022)

As soon as I finished watching The Gray Man last night, I smiled. Because it's a film that is as easy to review as it was easy to throw together. I'm not saying that everything onscreen here is a piece of cake, not when it comes to the technical side of things, but it makes use of a cast with obvious talent to tell a story we've seen 100 times before. So I am going to say that the Russo brothers (Anthony and Joe) felt quite at ease while filming this. I'm sure it also helped that Joe Russo worked on the script with fellow MCU workers Chrisopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

Ryan Gosling plays Six, a highly-skilled assassin/agent who was released from prison many years ago by Fitzroy (Billy Bob Thornton) when the latter realised he could make great use of a killer with a strong moral compass. When his latest job doesn't go to plan, Six finds out that his most recent target was Four, another agent like himself, and he was being killed because he had dirt on the new person in charge (Carmichael, played by Regé-Jean Page). Six then becomes a wanted man, and Carmichael has no qualms about using the sociopathic Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) to hunt him down. Lloyd won't care about collateral damage, despite the protestations of the woman who is supposed to help oversee this "off the books" op, Suzanne Brewer (Jessica Henwick). A young girl gets caught up in the whole scheme (Fitzroy's niece, Claire, played by Julia Butters), and Six ends up being given some valuable assistance by agent Dani Miranda (Ana de Armas). That covers pretty much everything, and actually gives you more than you need to know. This is an extended chase movie, and it's one that moves nicely from one set-piece to the next, making the 2+ hour runtime less noticeable than it otherwise would be.

Here are a selection of things I decided were most worthy of mentioning about The Gray Man.

1. Drones are a blight on the action movie landscape, and will do for them what smartphone cameras did for horror movies over the last decade or so. 

2. Ryan Gosling continues to be one of my favourite leading men, despite (or maybe because of) playing safely within his seemingly limited range.

3. Chris Evans also continues to be one of my favourite leading men, and we'll all be much better off if he gets to have more entertainingly villainous roles like this one. He's a man who really knows the value of delivering threats with a big smile and a twinkle in his eye.

4. Ana de Armas is a star, and I hope she continues to make hay while the sun shines. I also keep being reminded that there are a number of films from earlier in her career that I need to check out.

5. The Russo brothers CAN shoot action well, but you wouldn't know that from some of the main sequences here. Some of the action is nicely shot, but far too much of it is too choppily edited, too busy with so many elements being thrown around onscreen, and too focused on showcasing the filming style over showcasing the physical work being done by the leads (or their stunt doubles).

You should manage to have fun with The Gray Man. A surprisingly witty script, one that plays to the strengths of the leads, helps enormously, and every main player already mentioned does well in their role. There's also time for some good work from Dhanush (playing an agent named Avik San) and the great Alfre Woodard. It's not very original, which isn't a big problem when it aims to just consistently entertain, but it also never really feels like the stakes are high. Six is an unstoppable machine, even if he manages to maintain that identity with a hell of a lot of help from Miranda, and the last few scenes underline this by being sorely predictable and anti-climactic.

I'd watch another film making use of these characters in this kind of situation, but everyone knows how easily pleased I can be. This was a decent bit of witty action, but it was nothing great. I'm just thankful that the Russo brothers at least cast the best people they could for the main roles.

6/10

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Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood (2019)

If you take any one scene from Once Upon A Time . . . In Hollywood that features a look at the winding career paths of either Rick Dalton (former movie star, now a TV name, played by Leonardo DiCaprio) or Cliff Booth (main stunt double for Dalton, and good friend, played by Brad Pitt) then you have something pretty wonderful. Also take any scene with Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie) being happy and seemingly unspoilt by her near-stardom and you will be smiling, thanks mainly to the wonderful performance from Robbie.

But there's everything else here. Tarantino, for he's long been in the position where we don't have to use his full name, has crafted a fairytale, which the title clearly signifies, but he's done so in a way that loses focus, seems to often have its heart in the wrong place, and just stumbles into a grand finale that is, at best, uncharacteristically graphic and tonally jarring and, at worst, disappointingly disrespectful and distasteful.

The core of the film is based around the relationship between Dalton and Booth, as the former tries to keep working while not allowing his name to lose that star quality. Tate is shown being the kind of woman who lights up any room when she enters it, although those who know what happened to her cannot keep a tinge of sadness at bay, despite suspecting that the fairytale aspect may allow for more QT historical revisionism. And then you have the Manson Family, a shadow looming over the film once they make their first appearance.

Let me make something clear first of all. There are no bad performances here, and Pitt is doing his best work in years (this is arguably more his film than DiCaprio's, although the latter does brilliant with a range of acting, from his natural state off-camera to his cheesier style in some of his TV work). Robbie is phenomenal, if underserved, and there are also excellent turns from Timothy Olyphant, Margaret Qualley, Julia Butters, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, and Al Pacino, to name but a few. Even those who turn up just to do a small impression (Damian Lewis is Steve McQueen, Mike Moh is Bruce Lee) do great work.

All of the things that don't work here come from Tarantino, a man who has indulged and deluded himself for so long that I doubt he will see anything wrong in what he may consider the culmination of his career. The soundtrack is what you'd expect, the barrage of movie and TV references are on point (and the second-best thing about it, after the lead performances), the violence appears (but it feels different from other violence he has depicted, it feels . . . more unpleasant and out of place, considering the tone of the rest of the finale, as if he felt everyone would need things to be pushed further and further, like some kind of cathartic release), and you get so many shots of people with their bare feet up in the air/on furniture that it starts to feel like he's trolling us all.

Obviously intended as a love letter to this time, and a way of both celebrating and lamenting the effect that TV had on the careers of many in the movie industry, Tarantino throws everything in the mix without considering how much of it is necessary. Although this allows for more treats (the technical side of things is wonderful, when it comes to capturing the feel of the time, and the many shows shown are wonderful, as are some of the movie clips, both real and re-envisioned with Dalton in a main role), it also allows for the moments that feel most sour. Why have your character shown to be a badass in a number of different ways when you can just have him go toe to toe with Bruce Lee? Why give someone a dark backstory when you can just imply a very similar fate to that of Natalie Wood? Why treat well-known names with a little more respect when they can be bit-players in the lives of the two main characters?

There were so many other ways to do this, ways that didn't have to be signposted less than halfway through the 161-minute runtime (at least I think the moment in which Booth is asked to fix a TV aerial is before the halfway point). This should have been a pure celebration from start to finish, showing the bad with the good but ending on a great upswing. Instead . . . well, it feels completely misjudged, completely gratuitous (sometimes for the better, often for the worse), and completely half-assed, considering how much the viewer is expected to bring to the table in order to fill in the gaps and place characters that ultimately end up being so transformed and/or discarded by Tarantino that they didn't have to be based on ANY reality at all. But then he wouldn't be able to feel quite so self-indulgent, and we all know that QT loves to indulge himself. It's just that his best movies also indulge the audience at the same time. This one doesn't. In fact, I am tempted to say that it ends up being downright insulting at times, but then often manages to make up for it with some little moments of cinematic beauty.

Hugely frustrating, hugely problematic, and still absolutely essential viewing for those who want to see where they stand on another Tarantino film that, at the very least, is once again steeped in the history of the cinema he loves.

5/10

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