Freakier Friday
Twenty-two years after a fateful Friday, psychiatrist Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis) is married to Ryan (Mark Harmon, mostly wasted) and is overly invested in supporting her daughter, Anna (Lindsay Lohan), who manages a pop star and is a single mother to fifteen year-old Harper (Julia Butters, "Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood"). Anna is about to marry British restaurateur Eric (Manny Jacinto, "Top Gun: Maverick"), whose own fifteen year-old daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) and Harper have no love lost between them, so when fate revisits and finds Anna and Harper switching bodies while Tess awakens as Lily and vice versa, it will be an even "Freakier Friday."
Laura's Review: B-
Two decades later, this often cute sequel features double the body switching if not double the fun, with a script from Jordan Weiss that repeats many of the 2003's movie's beats (the 2003 film was a remake of the 1976 Barbara Harris/Jodie Foster starrer). Lindsay Lohan slips right back into Anna's skin even though she's now the mother trying to rouse her daughter for school while engrossed in wedding plans, but Jamie Lee Curtis doubles on her mugging from the first film, never once convincing us that she is really Lily in an older body. Standing in for Anna through most of the running time, Butters is Lohan's equal here, the two actresses the strongest pair, Lohan playing guitar and doing her own singing for a Pink Slip reunion. Hammons is the less likable of the two battling teen girls, her appropriation of Tess's character mostly achieved with conservative clothing.
If Tess considered her rocking daughter irresponsible, Anna now contends with a slacking surfer. Tess is now a pseudo-celebrity shrink with a book about to be published but who is clearly over her head trying to produce a podcast, another opportunity for Lee Curtis's broad physical comedy. She also cheerfully intrudes on Anna and Harper's morning routine, insisting on taking her granddaughter to school.
Harper, defined by her slouch beanie, and Lily, looking more Sloane Ranger, clash as lab partners, their resulting foam explosion requiring Principal Waldman (X Mayo, "The Blackening") to call parents in, a meet cute for Anna and Eric whose ham handed attempts to define themselves as single parents conveys obvious romantic interest. Director Nisha Ganatra ("Late Night") wastes no time, using a collage montage of calendar dates and snapshots to advance to wedding preparations. One all female gathering with palm reader/life coach/Reiki practitioner/business card printer Madame Jen (former SNLer Vanessa Bayer) later and Tess, Anna, Harper and Lily awaken to a horrifying new reality, one Tess and Anna immediately recognize.
And so now the adult versions of Harper and Lily will attempt to kibosh a wedding while the teenaged version of Tess competes in a pickleball championship with Ryan while Harper gets a new appreciation of her mom's job, updating popstar Ella's (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, "Turning Red") photo shoot and hearing her mom's own original recording. But the damage done by Harper and Lily comes to a head when Jake (Chad Michael Murray, 2003's "Freaky Friday") appears at the pre-wedding luncheon at Eric's new L.A. eatery, leading Eric to come to the conclusion that Anna's having second thoughts just as the girls who engineered everything realize their parents should be together.
It must be said that at least initially, the four way switcheroo can be a bit confusing and some bits, like Lily/Tess's coaching of Harper/Anna's flirtation with Chad are simply too silly to work (Michael Murray's realization of his dormant attraction to Tess is far more amusing). Ganatra's pacing is often frantic with her "Late Night" editor Eleanor Infante switching scenes before we've caught our breath. Production design features a livable L.A. rather than the tourist version, a shot of the Capitol Records building inherent to the plot. Costume designer Natalie O'Brien ("Five Nights at Freddy's") uses a broad brush to differentiate the four costars, Lily's aspiring fashion career worked into the mix for the film's climactic concert scene.
Nostalgia certainly helps here, the filmmakers finding a place for the original's Ryan Malgarini as Anna's younger brother and Stephen Tobolowsky's Mr. Bates, but the real treat comes when the original Pink Slip (Lohan with Christina Vidal and Haley Hudson) performs 'Take Me Away.' "Freakier Friday" is looking like a great double date for young mothers looking to introduce young daughters to a piece of their childhood with a film that promotes empathy by looking at life through someone else's eyes.
Disney releases "Freakier Friday" in theaters on 8/8/25.
