‘Freakier Friday’ Is A Surprisingly Heartfelt Belated Sequel
It’s been over 20 years since the original Freaky Friday was released in theaters. A lot has changed since then. For one, Jamie Lee Curtis has maybe gotten even more famous due to her return to the Halloween franchise and her Oscar-winning role in Everything Everywhere All At Once, while Lindsay Lohan has remained largely out of the public spotlight. Now, in an era where legacy sequels are all the rage, Freakier Friday sets itself apart by leading with genuine feeling.
A returning Lohan and Curtis are joined by newcomers Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons in a sequel that can comfortably sit side-by-side with the original as a delightful piece of family entertainment.
Freakier Friday: double the swaps, double the fun
The story of Freakier Friday is an interesting echo of the first film. Much like that first, a daughter and her single mother aren’t getting along. In this case, it’s music producer Anna Coleman (Lindsay Lohan) and her rebellious surfer daughter Harper (Julia Butters).
Anna is getting married to the charming, deeply caring Eric Reyes (Manny Jacinto). Already opposed to the marriage on principle of not wanting to interrupt her dynamic with her mother and surrogate second parent in her grandmother Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis), a new wrinkle is added with Harper’s dislike of Eric’s daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons).
A twist of fate at Anna’s bachelorette party leads Anna and Tess to swap bodies with Harper and Lily, respectively. As Anna and Tess freak out about how the girls are going to handle their responsibilities, the girls plot to break up their parents so they don’t have to live under the same roof.
Sometimes “less is more.” This is not the case in Freakier Friday. The double swap aspect of the plot allows for more opportunities for hi-jinks that director Nisha Ganatra and writer Jordan Weiss continue to roll out at a consistent pace.
Impressively, Freakier Friday latches on to Lohan and Curtis being older now and evolves their characters accordingly. Meanwhile, Harper and Lily provide a fresh, younger perspective as distinct characters that offer a decent representation of Gen Z that mostly gets away without cringe-inducing “how do you do fellow kids?” moments thanks to Jordan Weiss actually seeming to have a good grip on how today’s teenagers talk.
Freakier Friday deserves a round of applause for how it incorporates callbacks to the original film too. Characters such as Chad Michael Murray‘s Jake Austin or Stephen Tobolowsky‘s Mr. Bates reappear, and part of the fun is how they have (or haven’t) changed in the interim, and they’re all featured in an organic way to the narrative. The one downside of the film is that, with Lohan and Curtis being the marquee stars, Harper and Lily, or rather Anna and Tess in their bodies, feel shortchanged by the narrative.
Jamie Lee Curtis still has remarkable comedy chops
Despite their narrative undercooking, the performances of Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons pass the test. Julia Butters, whose talent has been evident since her scene-stealing work in Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, turns in another fully fleshed-out performance, instantly making Harper a lovable beach rat. Sophia Hammons as the posh, snobby Lily, is equally great, and the two of them do a wonderfully subtle job of embodying the adults.
As nice as it is to see Lindsay Lohan in a major theatrical motion picture in 2025, her performance is almost a weak spot. Lohan feels awkward, even a little stiff, playing a more maternal role this time around, a problem that compounds when she’s supposed to be playing Harper. She still gives a fine performance, but it’s just far from her terrific work in the original.
Jamie Lee Curtis, on the other hand, might be the best part of the movie. She tops her performance in the first movie, leaning headfirst into wild physical comedy and doing some serious emotional heavy lifting for the Lily character. Comedy truly feels like the genre she was born to work in.
A sneaky favorite of the movie might be Manny Jacinto. The The Good Place star, even saddled with a baffling British accent, carries such warmth to him and a sincerity that usually lacks in the potential step-parent character. There’s a scene where Eric talks to Harper in Anna’s body that’s so full of love and caring that it not only convinces Harper this is the right man to step into the family, it convinces the whole audience. Just like Curtis was born for comedy, he was born to be a leading man.
Dull visuals can’t hide Freakier Friday‘s shine
It can’t be overstated that Freakier Friday avoids the pitfalls of the legacy sequel trend by leading with an earnest compassion. There’s a beating heart at the core here that can hardly be denied. The multi-generational tale of motherhood and what it means to be a family left me wiping away tears at key points. Mostly, this is because Freakier Friday acknowledges that change is hard. Accepting loss and, more importantly, accepting love are easier said than done, but once one accepts both of these things, that leads to a certain kind of salvation and a better path ahead.
This is heady stuff, so it’s almost a shame that the production value in Freakier Friday is the way it is. The budget is around $43million, but it looks cheaper. There’s little color to be had here, with cinematographer Matthew Clark framing things in as flat a manner as seemingly possible. Without beating around a bush, it looks like a straight-to-streaming film, and not a great-looking one. The dull visuals don’t match up to the high-concept wackiness on display.
Does this hurt the film in the long run? Absolutely not. Freakier Friday is a deeply sweet movie that serves up its hit of nostalgia in an organic manner that manages to touch the heart as much as it manages to tickle the funny bone. We probably didn’t need a sequel to Freaky Friday, but I’m sure glad we have one.
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