Freaky Friday (1976)

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General		Extras
Category	Family	Main Menu Audio & Animation-A Look Back with Jodie Foster Scene Selection Audio-Freaky Friday Memory Featurette-A Look Back With Jodie Foster Game-Freaky Friday Memory
Rating
Year Of Production	1976
Running Time	94:12
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (68:45)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Gary Nelson
Studio Distributor	Walt Disney Studios Home Ent.	Starring	Barbara Harris Jodie Foster John Astin Patsy Kelly Dick Van Patten Vicki Schreck Sorrell Booke Alan Oppenheimer Ruth Buzzi Kaye Ballard Marc McClure Marie Windsor Sparky Marcus
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Joel Hirschhorn Al Kasha Johnny Mandel

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.75:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Spanish Swedish Norwegian Danish Finnish Dutch Estonian English for the Hearing Impaired French Titling Spanish Titling	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    It has been interesting to review the brand-new Freaky Friday followed closely by this one, the original film from 1976 starring Jodie Foster as the daughter, Annabel, and Barbara Harris as the mother, Ellen. I remembered this film (quite fondly) from when it originally came out as my grandmother took me to see it. I had not seen it between then and now. The films are obviously similar in storyline with a mother and daughter swapping lives for a day, gaining more understanding of each other and then swapping back. However, in a lot of ways the films are also very different.

    The first thing which strikes you is the roles of the female characters. In this film Barbara Harris plays a devoted wife and mother who has nothing to do with her life except do the housework, make everyone breakfast, shine her husband's shoes, whip up a gourmet feast for his latest work function and smoke cigarettes. The daughter on the other hand is focused on eating junk food, playing field hockey and doing her typing test. As you can imagine, this film does not exactly fit into the current world of equality for both sexes! In the new film, both the mother and the daughter have professional or personal interests they are focusing on and targets they wish to hit.

    Even if you ignore these issues, this film is really quite dated, with lame characters, overacting by everyone except the two leads, really ordinary special effects (especially the super-imposed parts) and smoking in a children's film! On the smoking issue, Ellen's cigarette is used as a symbol during the change of bodies with it swapping with the ice cream spoon in Annabel's hand.

    Another difference between this film and the new version is that this seems to be aimed at early teenagers (10-13) whereas the current film is aimed a little older (13-15).

    On the positive side, both Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris do an excellent job of playing each other. Jodie Foster is very poised and professional for such a young girl. Of course, by this stage she had been in quite a few films, including Taxi Driver. Also, the dog is great and got the only laughs out of me. The highlight of the film is the final chase sequence which is well executed and provides some child friendly spills and thrills.

    Overall, for modern audiences, this cannot be recommended, especially for children, due to the chauvinistic attitudes and smoking, however, it may be of interest for those looking for a nostalgia trip.

Video

    The video quality is quite good for a film of this age.

    The feature is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio 16x9 enhanced which is close to the original aspect ratio.

    The picture was generally clear and sharp, with no evidence of low level noise. There was some grain during the credits and the picture was soft in some early scenes but got better quickly. Shadow detail was hard to judge as there were no particularly dark scenes.

    The colour was generally good, however, it was slightly washed out as is the norm with films of this vintage. I noticed one small colour issue with a red suit which Barbara Harris wore after about the 45 minutes mark for most of the rest of the film. This quite regularly showed up as pink in some parts of the suit.

    There were a few white specks on and off throughout the film - noticeable when you are looking for them but not too bad. No other artefacts were noted.

    There are subtitles in nine languages including English. I sampled the English ones and they were easy to read and very close to the spoken words. English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles were also available.

    This is a dual layered disc and the layer change is well placed and not terribly distracting at 68:45.
    

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio quality is good, but very front and centre focussed (and virtually mono).

    This DVD contains three audio options; an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack encoded at 448 Kb/s, a French Dolby Digital 2.0 track and the same in Spanish. I listened to the English soundtrack and despite the encoding this sounds very much like mono for most of the film.

    Dialogue was clear and easy to understand. However, it was obviously recorded after the filming as it just didn't seem natural. It seemed to me that the overacting I mentioned above stemmed from these re-recorded vocals.   

    There were no problems with audio sync.    

    The score of this film by Johnny Mandel was not particularly noticeable.

    The surround speakers were not used at all.

    The subwoofer was not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu included a scene selection function, music and motion.

Featurette: A Look Back with Jodie Foster (19:47)

    This featurette is basically an interview with Jodie Foster recorded in 2003 where she discussed working on this film, her career as a child actor and acting in general. She also mentions her brush with Star Wars which was being made around the same time as this film. This is quite interesting and worth a look.

Freaky Friday Memory Game

    This is one of the lamer DVD games I have seen. It is basically a memory card game where you match similar cards by turning them over two at a time. There are only eight cards and you can play either as the mother or daughter. A child would be lucky to finish one game before dying of boredom.

    This movie is available on a very similar disc in Region 1 with the exception of  the Region 1 disc having additional trailers for other films.

    The video quality is very good considering the age of the film.

    The audio quality is good.

    The disc has two extras of variable quality.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall