I Was a Teenage Werewolf. I Married a Monster From Outer Space. The Catwomen of the Moon. The Tingler. Glen or Glenda. To the constituents of Generation X and thereabouts, the 50’s seem little more than monument of cheeseball cinema, and endless deluge of B-grade sci-fi, horror, atomic hysteria, and sexual tension one can hardly fathom audiences as having taken seriously. For some, the cinematic relics of that era are too painful to watch, but for others their camp value provides endless kicks. (Our generation probably has Mystery Science Theater 3000 to thank for reminding us that even the most vulgar and unconvincing dreck can still be enormously entertaining.) Pauline Kael said it best: “At some basic level they like the pictures to be cheaply done, they enjoy the crudeness; it’s a breather, a vacation from proper behavior and good taste and required responses.”

Half a century later, audiences have become so saturated in all the various tropes of film styles that for contemporary productions to evoke that sort of visual nostalgia has become a new source of pleasure. You didn’t go to Far From Heaven to see anything new, you went to partake in everything that’s amusingly dated. Down With Love existed solely to cannibalize sex comedies of the fifties, and we paid money simply to see how well they quoted an entire cinematic epoch. These are movies about movies and little else, more than one step removed from reality, and in recent years that’s become sufficient entertainment at the multiplex. (And don’t assume that’s a complaint.)

It’s that sort of endlessly-referencing cinemania that’s probably in part fuelling all the little film festivals popping up all over the country these days, and when Daddy Cool started on the festival circuit this summer it had to’ve pushed all the right buttons among those who deliberately seek out their picture shows outside of the usual venues. When a grainy local TV presentation fades into view, featuring a preacher for the Infinite Church of Science ranting about “the search for eternal life!”, it’s that sort of aplomb and hyperbole that instantly positions the spectacle back in the fifties. (That and the insane color scheme, as though someone’s turned the TV’s hue button as far as it’ll go.) With just a few visual gestures out brains identify the scene as pure Mad Scientist territory – especially when the opening intertitle declares “the events depicted are all true.” True to our cinematic sensibilities, maybe, looking for a good dose of irony.

Writer/director Brady Lewis serves up heaping spoonfuls of deadly-serious scientific violations of the laws of nature saturated with lush tinctures and framed by a tale of family dysfunction and sexual confusion that we all knew had to rage under the surface back in that oh-so-wholesome age. When the female narrator identifies that unconventional evangelist as her father, and then notes “only later did I become a girl,” we know we’re in for a ride at least as demented as The Fly or Them! gave us.

Roxanne used to be Roger, and her dad used to be a TV personality explaining basic scientific concepts like magnetism, photosynthesis, and molecular activity to the populace. This paternal host of “Dr. Alter’s Universe” had a set of twins at home, a boy and a girl, and led them on no small number of excursions exploring the worlds of tadpoles and butterflies and such, explaining the metamorphoses undertaken in their life cycles. His son would change no less dramatically later in life, as s/he “absorbed [his father’s influence] like a sponge,” and “spent the rest of my life wringing myself out.”

“None of us escape the sins of our father,” Roxanne explains to her psychiatrist (yet another popular profession of the fifties – who else prescribed all that valium?), and she’s convinced that the spate of birds committing suicide in her neighborhood by hurling themselves against the windows is her father’s fault. That and the death of her sister years ago in a reckless car accident, as well as intimations of sexual abuse that we can all too easily accept back in that repressed decade. When Roxanne tells her mother “daddy has to die – [he’s] to blame for the suicidal bird business,” we understand she’s not feeling homicidal just to avenge the local avian population.

Of course, we’re all familiar with the truism that a good deal of shrinks entered the profession because they felt they needed fixing themselves, and Roxanne’s therapist is no different. While Dr. Talbot and Roxanne exchange mildly condescending dialogue in the present day, his own (appropriately black-and-white) flashbacks to his adolescence (in the fifties, perhaps?) suggests early struggles with disturbingly savage impulses. Lewis’ expert direction prompts us to expect a werewolf in a letterman’s jacket at any moment, and in between counseling sessions Daddy Cool follows the grown Talbot around a dichromatic Pittsburgh as he brings kittens to seedy hotels to do Lord knows what. (“There’s more than one way to skin a cat” is but one of the many zingers Lewis’ script throws at us at just the right moments.)

I’ve already used the word “trope” in this piece, so please indulge me another moment of academic disquisition – as lycanthropy is often a metaphor for hidden secrets or shameful impulses given reign, it’s safe to say Daddy Cool’s central characters are on a journey to discovering their truest identities. For one, it means switching genders; for the other, it means a hairier alternative. What’s less clear is the degree their tales as told to us are shaped by delusion. Lewis often cuts to what may be what’s left of Roxanne’s presumed-dead twin sister, now a head in a bottle who’s done nothing but watch TV for the last several decades in her father’s basement.

These could be the mental extrapolations of a sibling so filled with resentment but also utterly shaped by television programs and 50’s sci-fi. The disembodied woman (now a dead ringer for Roxanne, of course) appears afflicted by a kind of turrets syndrome where she blurts out famous TV lines as beakers bubble around her and a theremin sets the mood, but for all we know Roxy’s subconciously concocted this tale to justify her long-standing animosity towards her father.

Lewis wisely refuses to solve all of Daddy Cool’s mysteries, and keeps his tongue firmly in cheek as the film’s absurdities unspool before us. A funeral procession of children mourning yet another deceased bird, a battery of psychological tests recited by an endless sequence of costumed characters, an upended car resting in an alley for no particular reason – Daddy Cool never lets up as Roxy and Dr. Talbot’s tales gradually dovetail and our heroes finally get “the guts to be myself.” Lewis packs a lot into a mere 85 minutes, and his attention to the smallest details (and the art director’s sinister eye for fifties colors) will delight even viewers not obsessively steeped in retro film culture.

Daddy Cool succeeds in recombining all the elements we’re used to identifying as trashy and mounting the results as an infinitely more artistic experience. He coaxes a remarkably deadpan performance from Street Nelson as Roxanne, whose slightly cross-eyed features and bemused look resembles a hybrid of Emily Watson and Laura Linney. After Daddy Cool’s screening at the Saugatuck Film Festival Lewis revealed the film took six years to complete, and that he could sustain such a compelling aesthetic throughout the irregular shooting schedule and intermittent funding magnifies the achievement. Lewis is a mad scientist of cinema, concocting oddball anomalies out of his lab like Roxanne’s father, who allegedly came up with his own variant of flies, this time without wings – or more accurately, “a new species of ‘walks.’”

“Boys have to perform in ways girls don’t have to,” says Roxanne, which may be true, but I wouldn’t trade Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance in Freaky Friday for all the world. This is already the second time the 1975 Disney flick has been remade, so you’re probably well acquainted with the premise, whereby a mother and her teenage daughter trade bodies and learn to appreciate each other’s perspective from opposing sides of the generation gap. But not before hijinks ensue, of course – and oh, the hijinks.

I can reliably attest that you’ll get plenty of laughs for your money with Freaky Friday; the only problem with this version is that director Mark Waters makes you earn it. It’s a good half hour before multitasking single mother and professional psychologist Tess Coleman (Curtis) and her Avril Lavigne-esque alterna-chic-bedecked adolescent daughter Anna (Lindsay Lohan, looking eerily like Frankie Muniz’s big sister) switch places, and until then Waters and scripters Leslie Dixon and Heather Hatch painstakingly establish the setting and the cast of characters, and communicate as clearly as possible that mother and daughter are not getting along. Friday is the perfect movie to go see when you’re running late; I cannot more strongly advise you to skip the film’s opening act, which is drawn with such insultingly broad strokes (Anna says “you’re ruining my life!” no less than three time in this section – I think we get the point) your patience will run out quicker than it did at Gangs of New York.

Thus as Friday plods along, you ask yourself if this wasn’t marketed as a comedy, and if so, when does it get funny? Tess fumbles with her various cell phones and beepers and palm pilots, Anna endures the various indignities of yet another day at high school while crushing over a rocker-boy with a motorcycle, and we learn (again, you could skip all this and not feel lost) that Tess is marrying boyfriend Ryan (Mark Harmon) in two days and still has to iron out the details of the reception, but Anna’s band (rock-n’-roll’s her only outlet for her frustrations, you see, ‘cuz no one understands her) scored a slot at a battle of the bands the night of the rehearsal dinner. Of course we’re handed the timeless irony that the mother, a shrink, can’t relate with her own daughter, and there’s a grandfather and a younger brother also living in the home, and did I mention that you’re ruining my life, mom? (So far, this movie’s ruining mine.)

Breathe easy when Tess and Anna finally start up the mother of all quarrels at a Chinese restaurant, and one of the hostesses intervenes with a pair of magical fortune cookies; the next morning Tess asks herself why she’s in her daughter’s bed, Anna wonders why her ass feels so big, and we’re finally off and running. (The little brother has the worst of it – now his own mom’s giving him evil looks and greeting him with “what do you want, punk?”) they quickly ascertain some “strange Asian voodoo” has taken hold, and they remember the cookies’ fortunes explained that only “selfless love will change you back.” Easy enough, right? The moral seems pretty simple – lucky for us, the joy is in the journey.

In the meantime, while the duo tries to satisfy the terms of the enchantment, Tess has a wedding in 24 hours, and Anna doesn’t exactly relish the idea of locking lips (and so forth) with her future step-dad. Anna has various exams to conquer and rivals to avoid and a potential boyfriend to woo, and though mom thinks that all can’t be so hard, she soon comes to understand how much high school has changed since her own youth. (Of course, she has to lecture Anna’s band-mates on how she has no intention of ever having sex, and they should resolve to do the same – weird how Anna has suddenly become as much a “fun-sucker” as her ma…..)

Anna-as-Tess savors the fact that she now has numerous credit cards in her name and a driver’s license, but she also has a full day of neurotic patients to counsel (her youthful advice to some of them is worlds better than any number of degrees could’ve bestowed), a root canal scheduled for later that day, she discovers she’s now nearsighted, and she’s got to attend a Parent-Teacher Conference on her little brother’s academic progress. (The teacher is somewhat nonplussed at how little momma seems to care!) Tess-as-Anna is forced to flirt with the rocker Jake (or else Anna will break off the wedding), discovers Anna wasn’t lying about her abusive English teacher, and has to watch her daughter wiggle through a TV interview scheduled at the last minute about a self-help book that she wrote, but Anna knows nothing about. (Anna can’t even pronounce the title.)

Director Waters gladly pushes the absurdity of each awkward situation just a little farther than even we’d’ve required (Anna-as-mom stage dives atop the TV studio audience; mom-as-Anna looks down and discovers her daughter pierced her navel without her permission). Scene after scene will leave you gasping for breath between guffaws, and for that we have Friday’s able actresses to thank. Just like when John Travolta and Nicholas Cage exchanged identities in Face/Off, Curtis and Lohan successfully mimic each other’s mannerisms and vocal idiosyncrasies until there is no question the “voodoo” did its job. The pair must have studied each other at length before the cameras ever started rolling, and the results are fearless and uncanny. This is the sort of film that has to bet all its fortunes on the performances, and whatever they paid Curtis and Lohan for their work, it wasn’t enough.

In all honesty, however, this is Curtis’ party, and even after star comedic turns in 48 Hours, A Fish Called Wanda, and True Lies, this is the role of her life. The Scream Queen has come a long way; despite pursuing a new calling as children’s book author in recent years, here she’d laid to rest all questions about her thespian talent. Friday lets her drive like a maniac, ride on the back of a motorcycle, talk back to her son, disrespect her fellow adults, and most importantly rock out on the guitar for a crowd of kids who weren’t even born when she faced off against Michael Myers in the Halloween movies. Even better, she gets a fabulous makeover after Anna inherits her aged form and decides some changes need to be made, and she swanks around in knee-high boots, multiple ear piercings, and multi-colored hair jobs. (It’s a brave before-and-after transformation, since the “adult” Curtis allows herself to be filmed as unflatteringly as possible pre-freakyness.)

While the pair does fair jobs of fixing each other’s problems while trapped within each other’s anatomies, they also cause at least as many new predicaments, not least how the young Jake suddenly finds himself irresistibly attracted to Anna’s way-hip mom, and he tries to steal her away the night before her wedding. Curtis, playing as though there’s a lovestruck teen inside her, plays to the hilt this whole May-December scenario, and even we start to fear we’ll see her make out with an underage lad. And though mom, inside Anna’s body, finds herself useless with her daughter’s electric guitar, she does start to appreciate this younger generation’s music, and you wonder if this whole episode won’t precipitate her own mid-life crisis when it’s all over. (She still bravely tries to sidestep her duties with the band – after completely failing to understand their directions to modify a few bars, she weakly replies “I thought we could play in the key of rock!?”)

All credit to Lohan for carrying her part, but it’s Curtis’ scenes that bust the gut, as she acts a third her age with abandon. As the film approaches its inexorable I’ve-finally-learned-what-selfless-love-means conclusion, she even pulls off a heartfelt speech at the wedding rehearsal dinner, and the defense can finally rest that this actress is the total package. (The scriptwriters may have composed the film’s first third in excruciating paint-by-numbers fashion, but they hit the ending out of the park.)

The moral of the story may be on the trite side, but consider for a moment the real implications if a mom suddenly remembered how a teenager’s life means being constantly subject to arbitrary authority figures, or a daughter has to become aware of her mom’s sex life. Bridging the gulf between generations is probably only possible to certain degree in real life, but the cinema’s job is wish fulfillment, and thanks to Freaky Friday, and to Curtis’ definitive interpretation, we can witness this sort of reconciliation play out with hilarity.