I can appreciate movies that don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are.
Freaky is one of those movies. What is unusual is it feels like both a good and a bad thing. It’s a parody of Freaky Friday, and when it hits the parody angle hard, it’s hilarious.
The problem is that when Freaky isn’t being a parody, it has no idea what it is. In the best moments, Freaky celebrates that it replaced the concept of body switching “teenage girl and hot mom” with “teenage girl and towering giant of a 50 year-old man.” In other moments, it’s painfully obvious that the teenage girl has no established personality, and the towering giant’s only characteristic is “serial killer”.
Both leads are competent, and at times hilarious, at selling the trope. Neither one is particularly talented at playing their “primary” body – Vince Vaughn is a goofy-ass serial killer, and Katheryn Newton is somehow not that convincing as a sad teenager.
Nonetheless, the parts where Freaky finds its groove makes it worth a watch.
Kat – 7.5
Kas – 7.5
