Freaky Friday (1976 film)
| Freaky Friday | |
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| Directed by | Gary Nelson |
| Produced by | Ron Miller |
| Written by | Mary Rodgers |
| Starring |
Barbara Harris Jodie Foster John Astin |
| Music by | Johnny Mandel |
| Cinematography | Charles F. Wheeler |
| Edited by | Cotton Warburton |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Buena Vista Distribution |
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Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5 million |
| Box office | $25,942,000 |
Freaky Friday is a 1976 American fantasy-comedy film directed by Gary Nelson and starring Barbara Harris as Ellen Andrews, Jodie Foster as her daughter Annabel, and John Astin as her husband, Bill Andrews.
The film is based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Mary Rodgers, in which mother and daughter switch their bodies, and they get a taste of each other's lives. The cause of the switch is left unexplained in this film, but occurs on Friday the 13th, when Ellen and Annabel, in different places, say about each other at the same time, "I wish I could switch places with her for just one day." Rodgers adds a waterskiing subplot to her screenplay.
Freaky Friday was remade twice: as a television film in 1995 (starring Shelley Long and Gaby Hoffman) and a feature film in 2003 (starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan).
Ellen Andrews (Barbara Harris) and her daughter, Annabel Andrews (Jodie Foster) constantly quarrel. Following a disagreement on Friday the 13th, Annabel leaves to join a friend at a local diner. In sync, Annabel and Ellen (who is in the family home's kitchen) both wish aloud, "I wish I could switch places with her for just one day". Their wish comes true when they switch their bodies and subsequently lives.
Ellen and Annabel continue to live their everyday lives as each other. Annabel remains at home, tending to laundry, car repair, grocery deliveries, carpet cleaners, dry cleaners, her housemaid, and the family Basset Hound. As though Annabel did not have her hands full, Bill Andrews (John Astin) coerces her to cook dinner for twenty-five as his catered dinner party plans fell through. Annabel enlists Boris, a neighbor whom she has harbored a crush, to look after her younger brother and make a chocolate mousse but all three manage to mess everything up, then later saving face by making everything into a smorgasbord. Annabel does have a bright point, such as getting to have a personal discussion with and getting through to her brother, Ben when she is picking him up from school about what qualities she envies about him when he wonders, and him being able to first share her loathing over the housemaid even over the same issues referring to her, and he turns out giving her compliments about what he personally thinks of her and giving testimony to how he has ever tried being a slob on her behalf because of how he dislikes the way that she is constantly the one being in trouble with the housemaid, and then confessing why he ever became a neatnick based on being scolded by the housemaid. Plus, between all the talks, they play baseball which adds to the affection. This, but mostly the discussions before and after leads to Annabel having remorse for misjudging Ben about her and getting a different outlook on him.
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