Freaky Friday; Elf

From the desk of The Movie Snob:

Freaky Friday. (B+) I saw this movie with, and at the instigation of, my younger cousin Diane. From this fact, you might reasonably infer that Diane is about 13, but in reality she is a young-hearted 27. Still, I remembered reading good reviews back when this flick first came out, and I have never seen the original, so I was game for it. It was indeed a very good movie, and although I suppose it was aimed at the young-adolescent crowd I found plenty to enjoy. Jamie Lee Curtis (Knives Out) plays a stretched-too-thin mother of two who is just a couple of days from getting married, and Lindsay Lohan (A Prairie Home Companion) is her unhappy fifteenish daughter. They magically switch bodies, and each has to cope with the other’s various crises while simultaneously trying to figure out how to switch back. Curtis was rightly praised for her portrayal of a teenager trapped in a middle-aged woman’s body, but I thought Lohan also gave a fine performance, especially in one hilarious scene near the end. If you missed it in the theaters, check it out on video.

Elf. (C+) I must regretfully dissent from the more strongly positive reviews previously posted by my brethren on The Movie Court. This flick started out amusingly enough as Will Ferrell (Blades of Glory) plays a human being raised by elves in Santa’s workshop at the North Pole, and I liked the homages to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Then Ferrell sets off for the Big Apple to find his real father, a crusty hardcase played by James Caan (The Godfather). Once Ferrell got to New York, his elf-out-of-water antics wore on me pretty quickly, and in the last thirty minutes or so the movie tries to evoke all sorts of holiday cheer without really earning it. On the plus side, Zooey Deschanel ((500) Days of Summer) is cute, and I was also glad to see Bob Newhart (Legally Blonde 2) in action as the head elf who is also Ferrell’s foster father. Harmless enough diversion, but frankly you’d probably be better off watching A Christmas Story for the umpteenth time.