Ah, Freaky Friday. At my primary school in the 1980s, it seemed like any time there was a rainy afternoon or ‘special occasion’ like the last day of school, the teachers would wheel out the dusty VHS copy from the school library (in my imagination – who knows, perhaps it was kept under lock and key in the principal’s office) and know that they could keep a bunch of kids entertained in a family-friendly, Disney kind of way. (We’re talking the original Freaky Friday starring Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster here, not the (highly enjoyable) remake with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan before she went all court case).

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for this film, and when it popped up at the charity store where I work I couldn’t resist snapping it up. (Yes, that job does provide me with a fair amount of blog material).

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the premise of the film, in which teenage Annabel swaps bodies and lives with her busy stay at home mother, Ellen, for one very freaky Friday. Mother and daughter are flung into the day to day hassles of high school and domestic life, with Ellen taking on a hockey game, and Annabel attempting to look after her younger brother and whip up a roast turkey, with chaotic results.

The vintage of Freaky Friday is instantly revealed through the gorgeously kitsch animated credits. Whatever happened to animated credits? Someone ought to bring it back. In ways I love the other-era, 1976 setting of this film, taking place in a time when teenage girls wore jeans and stripey t-shirts and parted their hair in the middle, typing tests were part of the school curriculum, Jodie Foster had freckles and braces, and two incomes weren’t needed to pay a mortgage. It was also lovely to see a positive, non-Mean Girls portrayal of teenage girls in Annabel’s friends (and points for a character called ‘Bambi’).

Less rocking aspects of this time period included a husband telling his wife to “just show up and look pretty” to a work event (though Annabel as Ellen does call him a “male chauvinist pig” in response), tinned cat food containing horse meat, and the fact that wood panelling was considered an acceptable method of interior decoration.

Freaky Friday is a great story, and while I enjoyed the feeling of nostalgia, and marvelling at what a great actress Jodie Foster was even in her youth, I realised (a little sadly!) that I prefer the 2003 version. I just found the first film too dated. As Jodie Foster said in the DVD interview, this is a film for little girls. And there’s nothing wrong with that.