Instead of another Freaky Friday reboot (Disney already did that in 2018), Freakier Friday is a worthy sequel to the 2003 version starring Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. The movie harkens back to the early 2000s glory days while also delivering something fresh for 2025. That’s a lot to take on, but the team behind Freakier Friday wisely ups the stakes by introducing two new daughters — and therefore a whole new web of relationships — into the mix.
Set some 20 years after the original film, Freakier Friday gives us an Anna (Lohan) and Tess (Curtis) who have learned their lessons after the misadventures the daughter/mother duo experienced in 2003. Anna has transitioned from being a musician to a manager while raising her teenage daughter Harper (Julia Butters) on her own. While the two occasionally clash, their relationship is nowhere near as tumultuous as Tess and Anna’s was at that age. That is until Anna falls for Eric (Manny Jancito), a handsome English chef who just so happens to be the father of Harper’s high school nemesis Lily (Sophia Hammons).
Like in the first movie, tensions bubble over at a wedding. The night of Anna’s bachelorette party, all four of the ladies meet with a fortune teller who gives them an ominous message. And of course, the next day they wake up with all their bodies scrambled: Anna and Harper have swapped bodies, and so have Lily and Tess.
It takes a long time to get to the good stuff. The first 20 minutes of the movie are an unnecessary prequel, as we get the full backstory of how Anna and Eric met and how Harper and Lily hate each other. It's a slog, and even after the body swap happens it takes a moment for Freakier Friday to find its footing, as the characters get sent off on separate side quests. But eventually the shenanigans truly kick in and the movie gels together into a delicious delight.
Sure, some of the jokes swing too hard in the “haha, let’s just say this Gen Z word” direction. But for the most part, the humor is handled well, poking fun at both the old (Parcheesi!) and the new (pickleball!) without being too heavy-handed. There are some very good throwbacks to the original, including the return of Anna’s high school boyfriend Jake (played by Chad Michael Murray).
Lohan and Curtis anchor the film. Both of them are hilarious, each wonderfully capturing a different sort of teenager trapped in an older woman’s body. Curtis as Lily-as-Tess is dramatic and image-conscious, pretending to be more confident to hide her insecurities. She glams herself up for Tess’s passport photo, pouting with lip plumper and maneuvering a ring light, and gleefully gets behind the wheel of a fancy red convertible. Curtis’ physicality is superb and she really feels like she’s 65 going on 15.
Meanwhile, Lohan has the more subtle challenge of conveying a teenager who can’t quite understand where her mother is coming from. Harper-as-Anna has a beautiful, understated journey as she slowly begins to realize just how much her mother cares for her. Separately, they’re good, but Lohan and Curtis really shine when they’re together, feeding off each other’s energies with stellar comedic timing.
In contrast, Hammons and Butters take a little longer to warm up. Part of it is because they’re stuck in detention for their first scenes and just not given much to do. But in bigger family scenes, where all four actresses get to play off each other, they manage to hold their own. This disparity does make the movie feel a bit uneven, but it can be explained away since Tess and Anna have essentially worked out their big relationship divide and it’s Harper and Lily who really need to mend their connection.
At its heart, Freakier Friday is about the complicated relationships between four women. The movie doesn’t have the space to explore every angle to its full extent, so it focuses specifically on the relationship between Harper and her mom and between Lily and Harper. Thankfully, those two pairings are developed well and are given enough time to develop even through the constant stream of funny gags. When the big emotional moments come around at the end, they feel surprising but earned, because the relationships have slowly but steadily been building in the background of the hilarity.
Written by Petrana Radulovic
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