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Freaky Friday 2 needs a new story to differentiate itself from the original and avoid feeling tedious and redundant. The sequel could explore a body swap between Anna and her own daughter, but the personality dynamics should be different from the 2003 movie to maintain the comical aspect. The sequel should not solely rely on nostalgia to be successful; it needs to deliver its own solid story that sets itself apart from the original.

Freaky Friday's upcoming sequel, Freaky Friday 2, needs to get creative with its story premise if it's going to live up to the original. Based on Mary Rodgers' 1972 children's novel of the same name, Freaky Friday (2003) follows a somewhat strict mother, Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis), and her rebellious daughter, Anna (Lindsay Lohan), as they switch bodies after setting a prophecy from a fortune cookie in motion. After 20 years, Disney announced in May 2023 that a Freaky Friday sequel was in development,...

There are more versions of "Freaky Friday" than the casual reader may realize. The original 1972 novel by Mary Rodgers ("Once Upon a Mattress") is about a 13-year-old girl named Annabel and her put-upon mother as they are currently living through a period of antagonism. In what might be considered a grand cosmic joke, Annabel and her mother magically swap bodies for a day -- a freaky Friday -- forcing them to live one another's lives and see how difficult the other has it. They eventually swap back having learned important lessons. The book borrows its premise from an 1882 fantasy novel by F. Anstey called "Vice Versa, or a Lesson to Fathers." Rodgers wrote two sequels, "A Billion for Boris" in 1974 and "Summer Switch" in 1982.

"Freaky Friday" was first adapted to film in 1976 by director Gary Nelson in a celebrated version starring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris. Thanks to heavy rotation on TV,...

The Brass Bottle

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1964/ Color / 1.85:1 / 89 Minutes

Starring Tony Randall, Burl Ives, Barbara Eden

Directed by Harry Keller

Possessed of a commanding baritone and an even more elegant delivery, Tony Randall was a natural for radio, cutting his teeth as program announcer for Wtag in Worcester before landing the role of a two-fisted detective in the early ’40s with I Love a Mystery. It was a voice—silky but full of import—ideal for Shakespeare in the Park yet the actor’s nervous-nelly demeanor would make him a standard bearer for light comedy. After flaunting his versatility in Broadway’s Inherit the Wind and television’s Mr. Peepers, Randall laid down an actor’s gauntlet with his gender-bending, shape-shifting turn as a mysterious carny barker in 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Based on Charles G. Finney’s 1935 satire—a cynical diatribe transformed into a cozy fantasy by George...

1. Vice Versa exists. This film sadly got lost in the crowd between the more well-known Dudley Moore/Kirk Cameron switcheroo Like Father, Like Son, which came out in late 1987, and the appropriately beloved Big, which came out in the summer of ’88. And it is sad because Vice Versa, “a comedy about not acting your age,” is a cute little film, and a good showcase for Judge Reinhold and a pre-Wonder Years Fred Savage. 2. The film has a classy pedigree. How many light ’80s comedies can you name based on 19th century comic novels? …That’s what I thought. Well, now you can name at least one, because Vice Versa is based on an 1882 novel of the same name by Thomas Antsey Guthrie (under the pseudonym F. Anstey, which he used for his funny books). 3. It doesn’t hide the ball. Vice Versa has balls, man. A lot of other body switch films hide the actual change up...