DAN WEBSTER:
In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the actor Timothy Olyphant commented on the recent spate of remakes and/or reboots of older movie projects. Noting that he had agreed to star in the forthcoming sequel to Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Olyphant said that his own experiences in such projects have been positive.
“I don’t have a problem with people remaking or rebooting things," he said. "I mean, everybody goes to Broadway to see the same couple of plays every few years. It’s such a dumb, shallow argument to say Hollywood has no new ideas just because they’re rebooting things."
Forget for the moment that the same complaints about Hollywood apply also to Broadway. I mean, how many times do you really want to see Oklahoma, Auntie Mame or Les Misérables, even given new cast members and ever more spectacular stage sets?
Let’s just address Olyphant’s point, which is that there’s nothing wrong with retreading old material. Is that true, though? For despite what Olyphant contends, so many ideas, new and original, have yet to be mined—ideas that aren’t being developed because, in large part, it’s more tempting simply to clone a proven success.
The most recent remake/reboot examples include three comedies, Happy Gilmore 2, The Naked Gun and Freakier Friday. A fourth is pure drama, it being Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, his remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 police procedural High and Low. All have their qualities, from the occasional guffaw to ample star power (hello Denzel Washington), but I want to focus on what is a reboot of a film that dates all the way back to 1976.
That was the year when director Gary Nelson adapted Mary Rodgers’ 1972 novel Freaky Friday. Following the book, the movie stars a 13-year-old Jodie Foster as the teenager who, magically, switches bodies with her mother (played by Barbara Harris). Among the six other versions of Rodgers’ novel that have been filmed, the most successful came in 2003 when director Mark Waters took the same idea, with a few screenplay revisions, and remade the movie with a then-16-year-old Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Lohan is now 39, and in Freakier Friday she plays Anna, the mother of teenager Harper (played by Julia Butters). Anna, who gave up her recording career to become a music producer, is raising Harper as a single parent. As anyone who has raised a teenager knows, this can be problematic. But Anna’s predicament is complicated by the fact that she is planning to marry Eric (played by Manny Jacinto), which is likely to require a move to London.
Being a total L.A. girl, Harper isn’t happy at the prospect. Even worse, Eric has his own daughter, Lily (played by Sophia Hammons), who likes L.A. even less than she likes Harper—whom she detests. The only thing the two have in common is a mutual desire to stop the marriage from happening.
The main difference between this variation of Rogers’ novel and the others is that when the body switches occur—this time courtesy of a palm-reader (played by former SNL cast member Vanessa Bayer)—the problem involves four characters instead of merely two. Suddenly, Harper and Lily find themselves in, respectively, the bodies of Anna and Anna’s mother Tess (played by Curtis), while Anna and Tess are… well, reliving their youths.
And amid the main plot paths—one pair preparing for the marriage, the other trying to prevent it—the film, directed by Nisha Ganatra from a script by Jordan Weiss, creates one silly, farcical—at times confusing—sequence after the next. Only a heartfelt message about walking in someone else’s shoes, along with the occasional sight gag, salvages things… at least somewhat.
Clearly, those who raise the funds to make movies, not to mention Broadway musicals, are obligated to look at the rate of return on their investments. And if they can produce something familiar that’s already enjoyed success, instead of something more unpredictable, then it might make sense for them to do so.
It’s hardly dumb or shallow, though, to suggest that what’s likely to end up on the screen won’t be worth spending $18 dollars or more to see.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.