Freakier Friday, 2025.
Directed by Nisha Ganatra.
Starring Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Mark Harmon, Manny Jacinto, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Christina Vidal, Haley Hudson, Chad Michael Murray, Lucille Soong, Rosalind Chao, Vanessa Bayer, Jordan E. Cooper, Stephen Tobolowsky, Chloe Fineman, Elaine Hendrix.
SYNOPSIS:
22 years after Tess and Anna endured an identity crisis, Anna now has a daughter and a soon-to-be stepdaughter. As they navigate the challenges that come when two families merge, Tess and Anna discover that lightning might strike twice.
Double the body-swapping, two families, and another marriage render Freakier Friday as the latest legacy sequel and Hollywood tentpole (although it was initially destined to be released on Disney+ until someone there developed a few more brain cells and realized they could make a whole lot more money releasing movies theatrically) operating under the thinking that bigger and more is better. This also might be the absolute worst approach a filmmaker could take for a premise involving characters living within others’ bodies, overcrowding the concept while, in the process, settling for broader attempts at humor that feel less specific to the characters and more often low-hanging fruit.
That’s also not to say the premise is inherently bad, as watching Lindsay Lohan’s single mother Anna swapping bodies again, this time with her teenage daughter Harper (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood standout Julia Butters, continuing to showcase she has talent here with a role that might seem simple on the surface to play given that the narrative doesn’t have much depth, but is challenging to inhabit in trying to mimic both another personality and someone of a different age), just like a fortune cookie caused her and her mother Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) to do so roughly 20 years ago, has potential. It’s a messy, confusing dynamic Anna has already gone through, which one would assume director Nisha Ganatra (and screenwriter Jordan Weiss, working from a story conceived alongside Elyse Hollander) would lean into more for both comedic purposes and understanding her daughter.
That’s not easy to do when Harper’s stepsister, Lily (Sophia Hammons), has swapped bodies with Tess, which also needs attention. Again, everything becomes diluted, with writers plugging in the cheapest jokes they can, whether it be about the physical pain of aging (and the same tired jokes of technological illiteracy among older people) or the shallowness of teenagers. Aside from a sign on Harper’s bedroom door that her room is a safe space, this is also a film that doesn’t seem too interested in updating its ideas for the modern world. And this is a movie where two adults (one of them being a grandma) briefly go back to high school; there is no specificity or sharpness to any of it. It amounts to a detention sequence that could slide right into any other movie, not exclusively limited to ones with a similar narrative concept.
Aside from more characters getting in on the body swapping antics, it’s also the same movie as the original: mom is getting married, daughter disapproves, and aims to sabotage it by any means necessary. This time, there is an enemies-working-together element as Harper and Lily – the film stumbles hard while straining to explain why they don’t like one another in an unforgettably long prologue that contributes to an excessive near two-hour running time – use their new bodies (of Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis) to ruin the relationship between Anna and the handsome, all-too-perfect Eric (Manny Jacinto) and break off the wedding. Since the film doesn’t bother to make any of these characters worth empathizing with or resemble real people, it primarily comes across as psychopathic and selfish behavior that isn’t funny in the slightest. Its efforts in catching us up on what Anna and Tess have been up to for 20 years are also rushed and glossed over.
Harper is a rebellious surfer, whereas Lily, still grieving the loss of her mother, aspires to go back to London and become a fashion designer. For some reason, she believes that the dream will be rendered impossible if her father marries Anna and stays in Los Angeles. Perhaps more inexplicably, Lily being British plays into Harper’s dislike, complete with accent mocking. Yes, she is also a superficial airhead, but everything the story presents as the reason these two hate each other is absurd. Anything about their personalities also gets lost in the desperate attempts at comedy.
What that means is that, even though it’s evident this ensemble is committed to the bit and trying (Jamie Lee Curtis especially knows how to play up the absurdity), they also look confused, unaware of what some scenes are intended to accomplish for their characters. On top of that, there is the usual nostalgia pandering (the initial freakout upon body swapping threatens to go on forever), a couple of cringe set-pieces (such as Harper in the body of Lindsay Lohan trying to seduce an ex-boyfriend of her mom), and sheer laziness in reworking the same plot.
Most infuriating of all, the teenagers are written as stunningly dumb, unable to put together that the fortune-teller’s (one of a small handful of supporting characters who occasionally get the say or do something funny) instructions on how to reverse the curse is to fix their hearts. As for Freakier Friday, it’s broken and should not be viewed on any day of the week.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder
