Movie Review: Freakier Friday

By John Corrado

A belated sequel to Disney’s 2003 body-swap comedy Freaky Friday, which starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as mother and daughter who switch places with each other, could have easily gone off the rails. Especially since that film was already a remake of an earlier movie from 1976 (starring Jodie Foster), that was in turn based on a 1972 novel by Mary Rodgers.

But Freakier Friday, the new legacy sequel directed by Nisha Ganatra, is delightful. It pays tribute to the original, without just feeling like fan service. The early-2000s nostalgia is prevalent, sure, but Ganatra’s film doesn’t just rely on it, instead using it as the jumping off point for a satisfying intergenerational family story.

The screenplay by Jordan Weiss finds a balance that works between delivering callbacks to its predecessor, while also telling a fresh story that will satisfy fans of the original and play to a new audience that didn’t necessarily grow up with the 2003 film. In short, Freakier Friday is a nice surprise. It’s funny and a lot of fun, but also has that heart that we want from what is, at its core, a sweet mother-daughter story.

Lohan reprises her role as Anna Coleman, who gave up her teenage dreams of being a rockstar, and is now a single mother to her own teenaged daughter, Harper (Julia Butters). Like her mom was at that age, Harper is a rebellious kid who would rather go surfing than go to school. But she lights up around Anna’s mom Tess (Curtis), now the hip grandma (with her own psychology podcast, to boot).

At high school, Harper finds herself at odds with Lilly (Sophia Hammons), a snobby British transfer student. But it turns out that Lilly has a hot, widowed dad named Eric (Manny Jacinto), who has a “meet cute” with Anna. When Anna and Eric fall head over heels for each other and decide to get married, the girls are faced with the prospect of being stepsisters. Suddenly, their wedding is imminent (sound familiar?), leading to increased tensions within the family.

But there’s some magic involving an encounter with a palm reader (played by Vanessa Bayer), that leads to another switch happening with the mothers and daughters all waking up in each other’s bodies. Anna has turned into Harper, Harper into Anna, Tess into Lilly, and Lilly into Tess. Mom and grandma are faced with being teenagers again, while the teen girls plan to use their new grown-up bodies to break up the impending marriage of their parents. In this way, the plot actually pays tribute to another Disney and Lohan classic; The Parent Trap.

If the appeal of the first film was seeing Lohan and Curtis playing each other, this sequel’s premise adds another layer on top of that with the various switches happening. Lohan and Curtis are once again super enjoyable together, while Butters and Hammons are both solid additions to the cast. The four women all bounce off each other, making their character growth feel believable to watch despite the fantastical circumstances at play.

Like any good body-swap comedy, the main enjoyment of Freakier Friday still lies in seeing the older actresses take on the affectations of their younger counterparts, and vice versa. For example, Curtis is now tasked with playing a snobby British teenager, and has a lot of fun with it. She is genuinely good here, with a few standout scenes that allow her to tap into a more vulnerable register as well.

Lohan’s knack for slapstick comedy shines through (like when Harper tries to flirt in her body), continuing her career resurgence as a Lucille Ball-type old school comedienne, a role that she has embraced in a series of Netflix rom-coms. Butters now takes over as the sullen but still sympathetic teenager that Lohan played in the earlier film. The child star, who had a breakout role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (where she stole scenes from Leonardo DiCaprio), has a sharp, wise-beyond-her-years screen presence, able to become more poised when her mom is inhabiting her body.

The plot mechanics can get a little convoluted, sure. But the script finds ways to nicely tie everything together, including the main subplot involving Anna’s client, a young pop star named Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). And, in a real blast from the early-2000s past, Chad Michael Murray (perhaps due for his own career resurgence) also amusingly returns to play Anna’s motorcycle-riding ex-boyfriend Jake. The film breezes along at a fast pace, making the 112 minute running time fly by.

The cast embraces the screwball comedy aspects afforded by the premise, but the film’s emotional beats also land. The heartfelt reveals to each other in the last act lead to a few genuinely touching scenes that have a surprising impact (especially for viewers who have a nostalgic connection to the original film). And that’s the key to the success of Freakier Friday, as both a legacy sequel and on its own; it’s a film that will have you smiling from beginning to end, delivering the comedic, body-swap shenanigans that we want, but it’s rooted in something more genuine. It’s a really good time.