That Friday feeling

Most mother-daughter relationships could use a little help, but in Freaky Friday, unflappable psychologist Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her 15-year-old rock-chick offspring Anna (Lindsay Lohan) are about to experience far too much of a good thing. Arguing in a Chinese restaurant, they're offered potent fortune cookies by the proprietor's mad old mother.

Next morning, they wake up in each other's bodies. Lohan is good as the adult, fending off evil teachers and potential boyfriends with equal fervour, but it's Curtis who really gets to have fun, and she's terrific as a loose-limbed, egotistical teen.

The trouble is that Tess is supposed to be marrying an increasingly bewildered Ryan (Mark Harmon), who Anna doesn't even like. Unlike the original 1976 film, here Ryan is a gem. But he doesn't spot his soulmate lurking under Anna's streaked tresses (presumably to avoid any possible notions of incest and paedophilia). The outcome is predictable and the moral unambiguous, but this is tremendous fun, light as summer soufflè and - amid the puddingy Christmas fare - twice as timely.

Amandla! - which means power - was the clarion call of black South Africans under apartheid. Their struggle also had a unique musical dimension, as this documentary demonstrates. Using archive footage and contemporary interviews with poets, musicians and freedom fighters (often all three within one person), Amandla! tracks the evolution of anti-apartheid from peaceful protest and the songs of Vuyisile Mini, through the complete repression that followed Mandela's imprisonment, to the 1976 Soweto massacres, the beginning of armed struggle (and corresponding use of toyi-toyi, a battle song/dance) towards eventual enfranchisement. The doc incorporates every great South African musician from Miriam Makeba to Hugh Masekela and brings home the poignancy of exile and the power of music as a weapon.

The heroes in a half shell are back. Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Donatello, better known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, are getting a re-release. The highest grossing independent film ever (no, really), it looks a little shabby next to the hi-tech wizardry of today's cinema, but that's hardly likely to deter pre-teens from revelling in the turtles' nunchaku action. The plot hardly bears repeating: in the face of a gang of thieves taking over New York, the turtles turn vigilante, their operations controlled by Splinter, a giant rat schooled in martial arts. With just enough self-awareness of how silly it all is, TMNT is cartoonish enough to prevent the violence becoming too disturbing for little 'uns, and cheesy enough to appeal to fans of post-modern irony. It'll be huge. Cowabunga!

In nice doggy film Good Boy! a puppy's not just for Christmas, he's actually your lord and master. When scruffy mutt Hubble (voiced by Matthew Broderick) crashes his flying saucer into a small American town, he reveals to friendless 12-year-old Owen (Liam Aiken) that originally it was dogs that were meant to bring people to heel. Hubble endows Owen with the ability to hear animals talk, thus revealing his mission: The Greater Dane (voiced by Vanessa Redgrave) has commanded that Earth's canines be beamed back to Sirius for retraining. Aw no. Very much one for the kids rather than one for the family, there are still enough visual gags, fart and pee-pee jokes to keep the juveniles engaged and parents from wanting to roll over and play dead.

Freaky Friday
Cert: certPG