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"I'm OLD! I'm like the CRYPTKEEPER!"

If there's anything that this summer at the movies has proved conclusively, it's that if you have a great high concept but do not have a workable screenplay, you have nothing. Bruce Almighty wasted Jim Carrey and a divine idea on a script that could think nothing better for God to do than make his girlfriend's breast bigger. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ruined what I hear is a brilliant graphic novel (and certainly a brilliant conceit) by bastardizing the characters before editing them into oblivion. Track record: not good.

Freaky Friday surprises by taking its one-phrase idea -- mother and daughter switch bodies, havoc ensues -- and using it to full, often brilliant advantage. It's a genuinely funny movie, sweet in all the right ways, and blessed with the underrated comic talents of Jamie Lee Curtis, who has here her first good starring role since Lord knows when. The script isn't peppered with vapid gross-out humor to pander to its teen and pre-teen target audience, nor is it coated with saccharine to insult their intelligence.

This is a real surprise, and even more so considering that the film is a remake, and the track record for remakes may be worse than the one for high concepts. Despite starring a 22 year-old Jodie Foster, the 1976 comedy, which I haven't seen, was met with the sound of collective indifference. The grossly unappealing marketing for this version may or may not ensure a similar fate, but it will not be deserved. This is a leap ahead of most Disney live-action family offerings, Pirates of the Caribbean aside.

Anna Coleman's life sucks, and she (Lindsay Lohan) is convinced that her mother Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) is responsible. About to remarry after the death of her husband and Anna's father, Tess is fed up with her troublemaking, self-absorbed daughter, whose only concerns seem to be practicing (loudly) with her garage band at inopportune times of the day, and being rude to her soon-to-be stepfather Ryan (Mark Harmon). One night, when the whole family, including Anna's pesky little brother and out-of-it grandfather, are eating at a Chinese restaurant, the elderly owner notices the discord and decides to intervene.

When Tess and Anna wake up the next morning, they find themselves in each other's bodies, with the promise that "when what you see is what you lack, then selfless love will change you back." This is mildly upsetting, as Anna has to negotiate high school to take an important exam, and Tess has to go to work to pacify a fragile psychiatric patient of hers. And, of course, the wedding rehearsal dinner is that evening, with the wedding itself but a few days away. Crikey.

The beauty of this Freaky Friday isn't in its audacity or unpredictability (mostly because it is neither audacious nor unpredictable) but in the way it tenaciously explores all the possibilities that its concept affords. In otherwords, someone -- most likely first-time screenwriter Heather Hach -- actually sat down and thought about this. The gags aren't limited to the obvious, like Tess acting uncool in Anna's body, or Anna turning Tess into a free spirit, though those jokes are in there as well. Anna has to cancel Tess's root canal appointment by exclaiming "that's not fair, they're not my teeth!" Tess tries to make up with Anna's arch high school enemy, only to be accused of cheating on a test. There's lots of little things like that, and they add up. The ending is sentimental but not phony, and its sentimentality is earned.

Seventeen year-old Lindsay Lohan has done a somewhat similar stunt before, playing both members of an identical twin pair in 1998's The Parent Trap, also a remake. She is up to the challenge here as well, but Jamie Lee Curtis steals the film as the confident mother, and then steals it from herself as the befuddled daughter in the mother's body. Curtis has done comedy before -- in A Fish Called Wanda, among others -- but never so self-assuredly.

Freaky Friday represents the rarity of Hollywood working on a professional level, delivering superior product and asking us to support it. The movie was made with finesse, with concern for little things like story and character, with considerable wit, with a good idea of the plot's possibilities. The horrendous trailer notwithstanding, Disney may have a sleeper hit on its hands; word-of-mouth will be good, and I think They will come.