Aaaaaaah, the sacrifices an AICN reporter must endure! The agony! The embarrassment! Father Geek here, I had free passes to both these pitiful efforts, and just couldn't work up the nerve to use them. Buuuuuuut, our man's man in Chicago, Capone, has proven once again his "Cajones" are massive indeed and made of steel as he boldly entered the theaters showing the following two flicks... and endured the full length of their... well, whatever. You're vying for better seats at this years BUTT-NUMB-A-THON aren't you pal... well, you deserve them for covering films like these for our readers... Name Your Row!
I didn't set out to see a bunch of film's this week that are geared toward the youngsters; things just happen that way I guess. I don't schedule the screenings; I just crash them. Tomorrow I'll cleanse my palate with the blood and guts of BAD BOYS II. Anyway, after enjoying myself immensely at SPY KIDS 3-D earlier this week, here are a miss and a semi-hit for the tweeners in the audience...
HOW TO DEAL
My contempt for this film is matched only by the overwhelming content this film clearly has for its audience. I should just end this review with that, but an iota of elaboration is probably necessary.I’ll begin with the most shocking thing about this review: I was actually looking forward to this film for a couple of reasons.
1) I like songstress Mandy Moore as an actress. I’ve never heard her sing a note, but I saw her in a sad but sweet film called A WALK TO REMEMBER a couple years ago and her decidedly unglamorous role as a dying young woman accepting a new love into her life touched me (I won’t say where).
2) Great supporting cast: “The West Wing’s” Allison Janney as Moore’s mother; Peter Gallagher as her father; Dylan Baker as the new man in Moore’s divorced mother’s life; Alexandra Holden and Moore’s best friend; and Mackenzie Astin as Moore’s soon-to-be brother-in-law. This is a pretty solid cast.
I’ll also throw in that the trailer for HOW TO DEAL intrigued me. It looked like Moore was taking on another semi-serious role as Halley, a girl whose life is in complete upheaval thanks to a lecherous father, fragile mother, and an older sister who needs everyone’s attention as her wedding approaches. Thrown into this mix is Trent Ford (also known to “West Wing” watchers as the annoying French boyfriend of the President’s youngest daughter) as Macon, a guy with the most obnoxious haircut on the movie screen today. (One of the film’s saving graces is that it acknowledges Ford’s stupid hair.) You see, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this scenario; a good film could have been made with this setup.
Disaster strikes with the screenplay and the way the filmmakers choose to have Moore play her character. Halley is too pissed off, and it makes her an abrasive and unlikable character. Moore’s acting abilities so far have only required her to place relatively nice characters; I didn’t buy her as a brooding teenager. But the fault isn’t entirely her’s. The script requires her to enter into countless situations where she walks into a room to confront somebody, they fight, and one or both of them storms away while the other shakes their head in frustration. You could almost set your watch to the confrontational rhythm of HOW TO DEAL. And I haven’t even gotten to the subject matters tackled in this movie. In addition to the divorce theme, Halley’s best friend gets knocked up by a guy who dies before they even find out about the pregnancy, Halley is struggling with her own should I/shouldn’t I concerns about sex, Halley and Macon get into a pretty major car accident that leaves her in the hospital, and the list goes on. The best thing I can say about the film is that it doesn’t end in a big emotional scene set during the prom.
HOW TO DEAL feels cluttered, its characters are unlikable and inconsistent, and situations they’re put in feel forced. Even the music cues bugged me. What an obnoxious little pest of the movie.
FREAKY FRIDAY
Perhaps an even bigger shocker than how much I disliked HOW TO DEAL was how much I didn’t hate Disney’s remake of its own 1976 hit FREAK FRIDAY, which starred Barbara Harris and a very young Jodie Foster as a mother and daughter who do not get along. (If I’m not mistaken, the story was also remade for T.V. in the mid-90s.) In the original, I seem to recall that the two women simply wished they could have things as easy as the other before their minds switch bodies.
In the 2003 remake, an actual spell is cast by a older Chinese woman after she witnesses a particularly venomous fight between the two, this time played by Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan (who seems to be making a career out of Disney remakes having played the twins in THE PARENT TRAP a few years back. The twist is this update is that the daughter (Lohan) switches place with her transvestite father (Curtis). Okay, okay, I know Jamie Lee isn’t a man, but this is not the Jamie Lee Curtis that I grew up with. Something horrible has happened to her, and she’s looking very...macho. I’m a cruel bastard, I know, but this is undeniable. The first time you see her on the screen, I guarantee you will recoil in shock. You get used to it; the same way you got used to see The Elephant Man, but...Wow!
Regardless of Curtis’s age catching up with her (I’m certain my day will come), the movie isn’t completely horrible. In fact, I liked the reverse chemistry between Curtis and Lohan. I genuinely believed they’ve have disliked each other for years. The relationships and situations that Lohan’s Annabell character go through seem entirely believable, and I could see how a grown woman might not be able to navigate the tricky waters that make up a high school social scene.
Curtis’s Tess character is an therapist, and it was actually amusing to watch her attempt to meet with patients with Annabell’s short attention span. Lohan’s problems seem a bit more deep than in the original film (and more than Mandy Moore’s in HOW TO DEAL, for that matter). Annabell is a bit of an outcast at school; her father died only a few years ago, and she’s having trouble dealing with her soon-to-be stepfather (played very nicely by Mark Harmon) taking his place; and at least one of her teachers is grading her unfairly but she can’t figure out why or prove it.The biggest thing FREAKY FRIDAY has going for it is pace. The thing just never stops moving. If one gag isn’t working, it’s alright; there will be another one in two minutes.
Director Mark S. Waters (THE HOUSE OF YES; HEAD OVER HEELS) doesn’t get too outrageous with the body-switching jokes, although a sequence near the end of the film set at the House of Blues. The women are smart enough to keep away from large groups of people if they can help it (which they can’t always). And at its core, the film’s message holds up: every once and a while, parents and kids need to consider what the other is going through. While I never really saw the need for yet another FREAKY FRIDAY film, this one works most of the time and kept me smiling throughout. If you can get past the initial nausea of seeing the Woman In Suit-looking Jamie Lee Curtis, you’ll probably have fun with this one.
Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
