Wish Upon a Star is kind of like Freaky Friday but with sisters and edgier. It stars a young Katherine Heigl from the days before she supposedly alienated everyone in Hollywood with her alleged attitude problem. (That was so hypothetical that I hope Ms. Heigl can’t be mad at me. Since, you know she probably reads this right?) It contains a theme song that sounds like a bizarro rip off of the Boy Meets World theme. And parents whose primary role in this film is to do absolutely nothing. And unlike the typical body-switching movies, which teach us to appreciate our parents, this one teaches us not to be assholes to our siblings. In short, it is awesome.
Theme songs for comparison:
Danielle Harris and Katherine Heigl play polar opposite sisters, Haley and Alexia Wheaton. Haley is a mousey science nerd and Alexia is a hot bimbo. They really cannot stand each other. This is mostly because Alexia is a snob and thinks Haley is lame while Haley hates that Alexia makes her late to school. So clearly, one of the sisters is more of a jerk than the other. Hayley also wants to date Alexia’s boyfriend. One night, each girl wishes upon the same shooting star that she could be the other sister. (Oh wait, sorry that’s a spoiler. So for most of the move we only know that Haley wished and not that Alexia did too…)
Anyway, they wake up the morning after the shooting-star-incident in the wrong body. Haley (in Alexia/Katherine Heigl’s body) is super pumped because now she gets to be popular and date her crush. Alexia is really frantic because she has a fragile soul and cannot stand life without the protection of her 1995 version of the Plastics from Mean Girls. They try a ton of other wishing methods (b-day cake candles, wishbone, pennies in the toilet a.k.a. “wishing well”) but discover that only the star method is effective. Thus, they have no choice but to live as each other over the course of a day.
The girls in this movie have even worse rules than the plastics. According to one of the clique members, they signed these rules in blood. Here’s a list I have curated from my viewing of this film:
- Shave every day, NO STUBBLE . Stubble sightings will be called out for public embarrassment
- No tunafish sandwiches
- Members alternate bringing diet soda for the rest of the group
- Never date a boy for longer than 3 months (a rule designed to “maximize” experience with “other men”)
- Do not wear the same outfit two days in a row
- Everyone must read Self magazine cover to cover
- All members must weigh in every Friday
- Clique members will be friends forever
Haley learns from Alexia’s friends that Alexia broke up with her boyfriend (a.k.a. Hayley’s crush), so she tries to get him back. It’s very creepy if you think about the fact that she is an entirely different person and she’s trying to make out with this dude. Meanwhile, Alexia binge eats since she is no longer counting calories in her own body. When Aleixa discovers a hickey on the neck of her usual body, she flips out and forces Hayley outside to wish upon another star. They find no stars as it is overcast and decide to spend the next day ruining each others lives.
Hayley (in Alexia’s body of course) comes down stairs to find Alexia (in Hayley’s body) dressed as a dominatrix. I never expected to see this in a Disney film, but it happened and it is weird. Also, their parents are these overactive psychologists who have somehow meta-analyzed themselves into taking a completely permissive stance on parenting…so the fact that they see one of their daughters dressed as a dominatrix and the other dressed in the same exact clothing she wore the previous day is not concerning at all to them. Things really escalate when Alexia performs an exotic dance on a lunch room table in Hayley’s body. They get called into the principal’s office and end up having a big heart-to-heart while forced to clean off graffiti that they wrote about each other in the bathroom.
It turns out that Alexia was freaking out mostly because she thought that Hayley was going to lose her virginity (her meaning…well both of them) in Alexia’s body when Alexia was stuck in Hayley’s body, which I guess is pretty stressful when you come to think of it. But she relaxes a bit when Hayley tells her all she did was kiss a lot. Hayley is upset that Alexia thought that she would have sex in her body and Alexia is upset that Hayley assumed she was having sex. They realize that they never really knew each other and decide to start helping each other out. Hayley will help Alexia look smart and Alexia will help Hayley find a boyfriend. Also, Alexia tells Hayley it isn’t right for her to be making out with her boyfriend because it’s not fair to him, so she tells her that it’s only okay to hold his hand and nothing more. But it is too little too late because Alexia’s boyfriend tells Haley (who he thinks is Alexia) that he loves her and then she gets weird and runs away because well it is a weird situation.
Things get really out of hand with the boys when their next door neighb
or, who had a crush on Haley from the beginning, starts to feel like his personality is more compatible with Alexia (who is actually Hayley!). That night, Haley wishes on a star to become herself again, but the next morning she wakes up and she is still Alexia. She thinks that they will be trapped forever as each other, but the real reason that they did not switch back is that Alexia also made the wish. But you already know that because I told you that in second paragraph. Anyway, they tearfully admit to one another finally about how they hated themselves and wanted to be one another. They hurry outside to find a shooting star, which of course they do because this town is FULL of shooting stars. They switch back and are all the better for having not been themselves for a while.
Very Special Lesson: It’s okay to date your sister’s boyfriend as long as you love her more in the end.
re many very special moments. But things got really serious on one dark day when Lizzie and her bffs made a music video. Aspiring director, Gordo, took photos of Lizzie and Miranda as they practiced their choreography to Play’s “Us Against the World.” I vaguely remembered that song, but I don’t think it was a hit. It is very catchy though. I still have it stuck in my head and I did play it on youtube a couple of times…kinda want to play it again right now. It’s just so catchy!
been under a lot more pressure than anyone knew–mostly due to the fact that her parents for some reason demanded that their thirteen year old determine her life goals. Miranda feels so much better that she’s able to complete all of her music video choreography even though she hasn’t eaten in the past couple of days. The music video is a more innocent rip off of Britney’s …Baby, One More Time. Though it does feature Miranda and Lizzie in detention dancing on top of a very uncomfortable teacher’s desk. The teacher also dances with them and they hip bump him and it’s kind of strange. Other than that it’s pretty cute and the song is soooo catchy. Here’s a gif: 
a cool disc jokey announcer voice though. You’d have to be down to listen to some Rolling Stones and Fine Young Cannibals though, and I’m not sure that’s the same crowd. I would make sure to have really cool prizes for the contests though.
who played on the facts of life starstruck jermaine jackson names
Once upon a time in the ‘90’s, there was this little gem of a show based on Ann M. Martin’s classic book series about a group of middle school girls who spend their free time in a club devoted to babysitting. This show must have been filmed at Astoria Studios because even Dawn, who is supposed to be from California, sounds like she’s from the tri-state region. If you were a girl child of the ’90’s you could not escape this book series. There was bossy Kristy, artsy Claudia, fashionista Stacey, California Casual Dawn, good-girl Mary Anne, ballerina Jesse, and Mallory who had red hair, wore glasses, and other than that had no defining features. I hated this episode as a kid because I thought it was a flashback episode full of clips from episodes I had never seen. As it turns out, it’s a clip show full of new material. I guess these were ideas Ann M. Martin had but never felt like turning into a full length book, and the TV show decided that these random clips would make the best series finale, which just goes to show you that not all very special episodes are about terrible topics. It’s the last day of school and the BSC is having a slumber party. Jessie is nervous about going to dance camp, Kristy is excited about going to softball camp, and Mary-Anne is totally bummed that she see won’t see her friends every day for two months. All of these thoughts about their impending separation lead the girls to reminisce about how they first began the club.
Today’s very special episode is “Never Too Young” and it deals with T.J.’s drinking problem. There are two storylines going on in this episode, one involving cafeteria food and one about beer. At the start of the episode Marcus and Mo are ripping into the cafeteria food and blaming the hulking eastern European lunch lady for the sub-par food. To demonstrate the staleness of the Bread Pudding, Marcus throws a piece against the wall expecting it to bounce back. But just his luck, the pudding is intercepted by the vice principal and it lands directly on his shirt. The boys are sentenced to work in the cafeteria for the foreseeable future or “until they’ve learned what it’s like to live in someone else’s shoes,” to put it in TV trope terms.
s rope, T.J. wanders into a back room of the basement where he finally recognizes two kids. Unfortunately for T.J., the two kids are the class flunkies and future burnouts, Kevin and Rich. Things are going really well reminiscing about the old days until Rich pulls a beer from his coat and asks T.J. if he wants some. T.J. actually says no and makes a joke about ruining his six-pack but Kevin and Rich are not cool with sobriety. They mock T.J. about going back into the party to hang out with all the babies, which remember T.J. was afraid of to begin with so they have a point. T.J. relents and spends the next hour getting wasted off one beer split 3 ways. When he reenters the party he is trashed and tries to get Titanic Kelly to dance with him by calling her “Kel, Kel.” Then he knocks into her, spilling her red drink on her dress, and all the kids back away from him because he has committed every party foul ever.
My boyfriend–who I forced to actually visit this blog by taking away the “read via email” function.–told me that every time a very special episode came on TV he would be like “oh noooo it’s one of those lesson episodes!” Child version of me, on the other hand, was like “Oh my gosh. This is a very important message about how to be a better person and not 
The Very Special Blog 