In August of 2003, Lindsay Lohan was seventeen years old and at the nascent days of her teen stardom; she'd starred (twice, technically) in Disney's 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, but her career was just picking up steam (the now modern classic Mean Girls would come the following year). It was 2003 that saw the release of Freaky Friday, itself a remake of 1976's adaptation of the Mary Rodgers novel about a frazzled mother and teenaged daughter at odds who swap bodies and have to learn to appreciate each other before they can swap back. Jamie Lee Curtis starred as Tess Coleman to Lohan's Anna, and a family friendly cult comedy was born.
Fast forward to 2025, where Curtis has a thriving career across television and film and Lohan, after years of tabloid scandal and personal hurdles, has reemerged as an elder Gen Z comeback kid. After a few years dipping her toe back into roles for Netflix films and the like, she and Curtis have re-teamed for a sequel to their early aughts hit, positioning them both a generation older but still facing the same predicament, this time times two.
While the stars have returned, a new creative team is behind Freakier Friday. Credit still goes to Rodgers for the original book and concept; Nisha Ganatra (Deli Boys, The High Note) helms from a script by Jordan Weiss (Sweethearts), the film also lists story by Elyse Hollander and recognizes characters based on the 2003 film's writers, Leslie Dixon and Heather Hach. It takes a village...which is not usually a good sign when it comes to movies, and sadly, that holds true here.
More than twenty years on from Freaky Friday, the script at least allows Lohan's Anna and Curtis's Tess to have aged, very quickly introducing their current dynamic—still codependent, still snappy adn sharp—and now including Anna's own teenage daughter, Harper (Julia Butters). Within the first twenty minutes of the film, Harper has come to odds with a new classmate from England, Lily (Sophia Hammons), and Anna has met-cute with Lily's very good-looking dad, Eric (Manny Jacinto, The Good Place). The film goes to great lengths to zip us through a contrived set-up that puts Anna, Tess, Harper, Lily and Eric into a shared plot so we can get to the business of body swapping, this time between the younger girls and the grown women. Soon, Tess is Lily and vice versa...and Anna is Harper and vice versa.
The biggest issue with Freakier Friday (aside from the awful British accents American Hammons and Canadian Jacinto are made to have) is that its a sequel based on a premise that has no where to go. From the minute the plot is set in motion, we know exactly how this will resolve and we're subjected to watch all the cringey comedy along the way. There are easter eggs here and there and at least one key return character in Anna's teen crush Jake (Chad Michael Murray), and the overarching story of Lily navigating life without her mom and Harper refusing to move abroad when Anna and Eric marry is about as deep as a puddle.
It's unclear who exactly wants this sequel or who the studio expects to show up for it. Perhaps women nearing middle age who were also teens in 2003 and are eager to see what the Coleman family is up to now? All several dozen of them? There isn't much other reason to take the time out of one's day (or the money out of one's pocket) to trek to a theater to see this one. By the film's predictable ending, I found myself most interested in the absolute blast Curtis seemed to be having playing a dippy teenager in flashy fashions. It's even nice to see Lohan back on screen, if only because her time with us was relatively touch and go there for a bit in the 2010s. Perhaps she'll be OK after all. Freakier Friday, on the other hand, is not.
Freakier Friday is now in theaters.
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