There’s a generation out there for whom a sequel to 2003 body swap comedy Freaky Friday enjoys the same nostalgia premium as did the return of Star Wars in 2015’s The Force Awakens to most of the then adult population. That shouldn’t be too surprising. The force is with few in Hollywood as it is with Jamie Lee Curtis. It was, as word has it, only pressure from Curtis that saved Freakier Friday from the same disservice of a streaming debut as befell 2022’s Disenchanted. And why should such sequels be relegated so? Throwing back to the sort of comedy froth that ruled the noughties’ multiplex, Freaky Friday belongs on the big screen. There’s an audience for it and you can bet they’ll show.
There are echoes of the Jordan Peele in Zach Cregger’s ascendancy from sitcom frequenter to horror messiah. Indeed, much as was the case for Peale’s Get Out, Cregger already finds himself proclaimed the voice of his jump scare generation after just one frightener. In some quarters, at least. That first round – a satiating palette teaser if ever one were – was 2022’s big-time over-performer Barbarian, AirBnb thriller and bidding war instigator. Indeed, Cregger’s sophomore potential lured even Peele himself from the woodwork. Peele’s failure to secure Cregger’s script proved so crushing to him that it would ultimately see him split from his management. Contentious stuff but perhaps unsurprising. More has been spent on Weapons than Barbarian made in profit. It’s not just the expectation that’s high with this one, then.
Play it straight. That was always the key. Certainly, it was what made Leslie Neilsen, an erstwhile straight actor, such a gift in the casting of 1988’s The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad, not to mention Airplane before it. Neilsen shot down the barrel as the OG Lt. Frank Drebin and the writing did the rest. Emulation, then, proves an early win in Akiva Schaffer’s remake, which is titled more simply The Naked Gun, with Liam Neeson pitch perfect as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr. (‘Love you Daddy’). Right out of the blocks, in an opening swing at Mission: Impossible silliness, Neeson has the brief covered. He’s a stupidly safe pair of hands in a riotously stupid 85 minutes.
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