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Trading Faces: 10 Body-Switching Movies
David Bax , April 17th, 2009 03:36

As the insipid-looking Zach Efron vehicle 17 Again threatens to invade our cinemas, David Bax from the Battleship Pretension podcast looks back on the often overlooked (and rightly so) body-switching film genre.

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Good Body-Switching

1. Freaky Friday

This is it. The mother of all body-switching movies, and not only because it involves a mother. Whether you're talking about the original with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris or the 2003 remake with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, you're talking about the best of the bunch. Maybe it's the fact that the moralising takes a backseat to the inherent fun of the premise. Maybe they've just gotten lucky with the casting. (We all used to like Lindsay Lohan, remember? Remember Mean Girls?) Whatever the secret formula (or magic potion or fairy dust or transference of dead souls into machinery), _Freaky Friday _ has managed to nail it twice.

As far as New Line's 17 Again, like we said, the jury's still out. But Zac Efron, you are no Lindsay Lohan.