Returning to the universe of a beloved movie for a long-anticipated sequel is a tall order, but doing it several decades later puts the pressure on even more: it can be hard to deliver something truly satisfying and not just "fine" because your expectations are low. Just ask "Happy Gilmore 2." But every now and then, the magic that made that original movie so wonderful comes back, and I'm surprised as anyone that "Freakier Friday" has come through with flying colors.
Back in 2003, Disney's "Freaky
Friday" was a modern remake of a classic body swap comedy that found Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as a mother/daughter duo struggling to find common ground until a mystical fortune cookie forced them to literally walk in each others' shoes and see how the other half lives. It's arguably the best version of the familiar formula (even Quentin Taraintino loves it), perfectly utilizing the early 2000s rebellious, millennial energy and style against a suburban therapist mother who needs to loosen up and remember what it's like to be young again. Flash forward to 2025, and "Freakier Friday" ups the ante with a four-way body swap.
Tess Coleman (Curtis) is still a working psychologist preparing to head out on her first book tour, and she's even tapping in on that sweet podcasting market. At least that's the medium the movie uses to help catch the audience up on her life, which includes helping her adult daughter Anna (Lohan), now working as a music manager to a major popstar named Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan of the spectacular "Never Have I Ever"), as a quasi-co-parent of Anna's similarly rebellious, surfer daughter Harper (Julia Butters, of "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"). You see, Anna chose to raise Harper as a single parent, and there's no more backstory than that. Honestly, it's not important to the story, and in reality, it's no one's business but Anna's.
However, Anna's life is about to change pretty drastically when a school rivalry between Harper and a newly emigrated, fashion-inclined, posh British student named Lily (Sophia Hammons) results in a meet-cute with fellow parent Eric (Manny Jacinto of "The Good Place") where the sparks fly flirtatiously, and a six-month courtship leads to a fast engagement and impending marriage that makes Harper and Lily's confrontational relationship that much harder to deal with (not to mention providing a similar urgent framework for the body swap formula to wreak havoc on all over again).
Read more: The 15 Best Sequels To Bad Movies
Familiar Laughs But Fresh Jokes With New Wrinkles, Both Literally And Figuratively
Thankfully, "Freakier Friday" is not just a lazy retread of the first movie, and there's a fantastic evolution of maturity for our returning characters, as well as some new problems they have to confront in this stage of their life. Plus, we have a second layer of heart and laughs when it comes to bringing in the younger generation in on the fun. Even the actual magical spell that brings about the body swap has learned lessons from the past, as the generic, stereotypical Asian mysticism from the original movie been replaced by discount fortune teller Madame Jen, played splendidly by Vanessa Bayer ("Saturday Night Live").
When the spell takes hold overnight, it's not Tess and Anna who are swapping places with each other. This time, Tess swaps places Lily, and Anna Swaps places with Harper, making for more absurd confusion and chaos. In fact, if there's one major shortcoming in the movie, it's that the four-way body swap is initially quite disorienting, and for the first half of the movie, you might find yourself forgetting who is supposed to be embodying who. But ultimately, it gets much easier to follow as the story unfolds.
While the first movie offered plenty of age perspective jokes and gags to comment on the gap between Lohan's 15-year old Anna and Curtis' middle-aged Tess, a new wrinkle is added now that Tess is a full-fledged grandmother. Kudos to Curtis for being game to have Lily make such devastating jokes about her aged appearance, from having a crevasse in her forehead to not having any lips. There are plenty of other amusing instances of generational poking and prodding, everything from Facebook being perceived as a technology for old people to Coldplay and John Mayer being the geriatric music of choice.
"Freakier Friday" doesn't waste much time explaining this spell to Harper and Lily, leaving them to trust that Tess and Anna know what they're talking about when they reveal that they've dealt with this before. But this leaves Tess and Anna scrambling to figure out how to reverse the spell as quickly as possible while still having some fun as aged parents in teenage bodies, taking full advantage of eating all the stuff that their bodies can't handle and riding scooters on the beachside while the Spice Girls blasts on the soundtrack.
Curtis And Lohan Have A Blast, But Butters And Hammons Shine Too
Meanwhile, Harper and Lily are keeping a little secret of how to reverse the spell so they can spend time on Tess and Anna's bodies in order to stop Anna getting married to Eric. Harper doesn't want to leave Los Angeles, but Lily wants to go back to London, her heart still aching from the loss of her mother as a child. So they both come up with a plan to break them up that involves calling up Anna's ex-boyfriend Jake (Chad Michael Murray, now a Netflix Christmas hunk), the biker heartthrob from the first movie. Honestly, it's almost like double "Freaky Friday" with a reverse-"Parent Trap," which sounds like a very complicated ice skating move.
But this is also where the movie's beating heart comes from. Harper and Lily are the characters who primarily have to come to an understanding in order to break the spell, though there's still plenty that Anna and Tess have to resolve too, even if their conflict involving Tess' overbearing co-parenting and Anna's reluctance to accept her help kind of falls by the wayside when all is said and done.
Don't worry, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan still get plenty of screen-time, and they're not anywhere near sidelined because of this. It's just that we've already seen Lohan and Curtis do this dance before, and it's Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons turn to learn a lesson. The good news is that both young stars more than hold their own next to their veteran screen counterparts, especially when it comes to the genuinely heartfelt and emotional story beats that help make this sequel better than it has any right to be.
Curtis is still the standout MVP of the entire production. She again gives this performance 100%, and the way she embodies teenage energy with that little extra, uptight, British twist as Lily is incredibly funny. Lohan is still having a good time too, and she occasionally gets to bring some of the same energy to her performance, but Curtis just has so much more to play with in her portrayal of Sophia Hammons' character.
Yes, there's still plenty of hilarity and silliness that's just on the cusp of being too absurd, especially when Lily and Harper (remember, they're in Tess and Anna's bodies) start hanging out with popstar Ella, help her through a high profile celebrity breakup and have an impromptu photoshoot wearing some wild, fashionable wardrobes in a sequence that's undeniably fun but verges and being a little too wacky. But "Freakier Friday" still doesn't stray too far from the tone and style of the original.
A Legacy-Quel That Doesn't Shoehorn In Callbacks And Nostalgia? Amazing!
Pperhaps the most refreshing part of this legacy-quel is that it's not obsessed with simply reliving the most beloved moments just because they can. Director Nisha Ganatra (of Mindy Kaling's "Late Night") and writer Jordan Weiss ("Sweethearts") use callbacks and other returning characters sparingly and naturally. In fact, other than the primary concept of the film itself, the sequel ultimately saves most of the nostalgia for the film's final act, which will make fans of Lohan's fictional Pink Slip rock band very happy.
You'll get to see Mark Harmon back as Tess' husband Ryan, though he's not giving quite the same size supporting role, and that's perfectly fine. Anna's rock band friends played by Christina Vidal and Haley Hudson are back, but they're not shoehorned into the story. Anna's brother Harry (again played by Ryan Malgarini) comes back for a brief moment, but the filmmakers were smart enough to know that he didn't need to be involved with the whole story this time. Even Chad Michael Murray's presence as Jake makes perfect sense, and the script isn't overly concerned with explaining what went wrong with his high school romance with Anna, because it's been 22 years, and no one should be worried about that at this age.
When it comes down to it, "Freakier Friday" is lively, fun, charming, and just plain delightful. It manages to return to the world of the original "Freaky Friday" without getting too big for its britches or missing a beat. Again, while the quadruple body swap can tend to make the movie feel a bit unwieldy and messy here and there, "Freakier Friday" is still a blast, maybe even a hoot, bringing to mind movies like "13 Going on 30" and "Clueless" before it. Honestly, it's just nice to have this kind of live-action family comedy deliver such quality laughs at a time when studios have largely abandoned them.
/Film Rating: 8 out of 10
"Freakier Friday" opens in theaters on August 8, 2025.
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