Freaky Friday, on Disney Channel
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This first aired in 2018, but I didn't see it until 2025, during my summer of DCOMs. I also watched it because it was the opening night of the new movie "Freakier Friday". It's an adaptation of the 2016 stage musical of the same name, which itself was based on a book I haven't read, and is a remake of the 1976 and 2003 theatrical films. Honestly, I wasn't expecting to like this movie very much, but I ended up thinking it was fairly good, and I'm totally glad to have seen it.
A teenage girl named Ellie Blake and her friends Monica and Karl are planning on participating in a scavenger hunt, which is a tradition at their school, I guess (though it takes place all over town). This year the hunt is being run by a boy Ellie likes, named Adam. Unfortunately, the hunt falls on the same night as the wedding rehearsal of Ellie's widowed mother, Katherine, and her fiance, Mike (Alex Désert). So Katherine tells Ellie she can't take part in the hunt. And they have any number of other things that bug them about each other. In the morning, Ellie's little brother, Fletcher, steals her hourglass to perform a magic trick with it, but the trick fails. A little later, Ellie and Katherine are both holding onto the hourglass while singing about wishing their lives were different for one day, or whatever, and they magically swap bodies. (I kind of assumed Fletcher's failed magic trick had somehow turned the hourglass magical.) Of course, they both freak out about this change. But unfortunately, they accidentally broke the hourglass.
Ellie figures they should be able to use Katherine's identical hourglass, as they had each been given one by Ellie's late father. But it turns out Katherine had sold hers to an antique shop. So Ellie (in her mother's body) will have to go to the store to buy it back, while Katherine (in Ellie's body) must go to school. But Ellie discovers that the shop has gone out of business, and all its merchandise has wound up in 33 different stores. So Ellie comes up with the idea of getting Adam to add the hourglass to the list of things everyone must search for in the hunt. Meanwhile, Ellie also has to deal with the planning of her mother's wedding, and trying to get a journalist named Danielle to write an article about the wedding for her magazine, which would help Katherine's new business (which was like catering or wedding planning or something, I forget). But Ellie and Katherine both act very much unlike the people whose bodies they're inhabiting. So Danielle nearly decides not to do the article, and Katherine's assistant, Torrey, nearly quits. And Katherine messes up Ellie's friendship with Monica and Karl, as well as upsetting Adam. There's also a mean girl at school named Savannah, who intends to win the scavenger hunt, and has a rivalry with Ellie and her friends.
I don't want to spoil too much more about the plot, but of course it has a happy ending. Ellie and Katherine learn to understand and love each other more. (It's actually kind of weird seeing them sing about that during the wedding, when no one else has any idea what's going on.) And they switch back to their own bodies. I was wrong about Fletcher's trick having made the hourglass magical, because I thought he'd end up having to repeat the trick with the second hourglass, but he didn't. So I have no idea why both hourglasses were magical. But whatever. Um, I also want to say that a lot of the movie's humor was kind of cringe. But overall I liked the story. And I liked the job Ellie's actress did of playing Katherine-as-Ellie. For the most part I didn't like Katherine's actress playing Ellie-as-Katherine as much. She made Ellie's personality seem kind of unlikable and bratty, more so than I think Ellie was when she was in her own body at the start of the movie. Then again, I don't think I liked Katherine as much when she was in her own body as I did when she was in Ellie's body. So maybe I just liked Ellie's actress more than Katherine's. I dunno. It's confusing. But I did think all the songs were pretty good, and served the story well. I also really liked all the dancing that went along with the songs. I was a bit disappointed that Mike didn't have a song of his own, considering his actor is in a band in real life. But again I say whatever. Anyway... I guess I don't know what else to tell you.