Director: Nisha Ganatra
Writer: Jordan Weiss
Stars: Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Butters
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.
Legacy sequels have a power over us. They tug on that need for the familiar and nostalgia for something we once loved. Many of these films have come out in the last ten years and they don’t always play by the rules of their originals or they change their tone to fit today’s market. Often they are a rehash or a reimagining of their original. Freakier Friday takes that route, where it is a continuation, but also a bit of a rehash of old material in a new package. Though for this franchise, that’s not at all a bad thing.
The 2003 Freaky Friday is a classic for a reason. It’s a simple story told well. The freakier sequel takes the elements that worked well and adds to it. Because of Disney magic (money), not just the swapped pair of Anna (Lindsay Lohan) and Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis), but the whole principle cast is back including original love interest Jake (Chad Michael Murray), boorish teacher Mr. Bates (Stephen Tobolowsky), and hunky stepdad Ryan (Mark Harmon). They even reunited the original members of Pink Slip, one of the coolest movie bands in history.
This is what’s different about legacy sequels almost a decade into their prominence. They know we’ve watched this film over and over. They know we would notice if an actor who hasn’t died or has been cancelled doesn’t make at least a cameo appearance. They know we are beyond remake territory, which involves call backs, references, and overt homage. We need a furtherance of the story that was. We need to know where these people are now and who they are now.
This is why it’s a bit of a let down that Freakier Friday‘s plot hinges on nearly the same goals as the original. Both films involve a life-changing concert and a rehearsal meal for a wedding between a single mother and a hunky new beau. The plot of Freakier Friday hits nearly every beat of the original while integrating in the new cast. The story, while still powerful with mother/daughter energy, now adds in sisterly and blended family energy, but it’s basically the same as the original. You don’t come to a film like Freakier Friday for a grand new scheme or Marvel level machinations, you come for the same chemistry from the original.
Jamie Lee Curtis may have a long legacy of great roles in her career, but pretending to be a teenager who doesn’t understand the aging body she’s stuck in is something she’s perfect at. Let that be repeated that Jamie Lee Curtis is perfect in both Freaky Friday and Freakier Friday. She simply has a spark of youthful verve that is otherworldly and outrageously funny. Her physicality and ability to channel the essence of the character is uncanny.
This time Curtis has Lindsay Lohan as a partner and not an adversary. Here, Lohan reminds us why we so thoroughly enjoyed her in the early ’00s. She’s got great timing, an expressive face, and can still pratfall with the best of them. The scene she and Curtis share where they, playing the teenagers inhabiting them, try and seduce Anna’s former flame, Jake, is utterly, dementedly, crying laughing perfect. It makes you want Lohan to keep this momentum going and find projects worthy of her depth of talent because in spite of the twists and turns her career has taken, she’s a very talented actress and deserves more roles like this one.
Freakier Friday is a film that isn’t going to be a prestige player or going to change the way people see cinema, but it is a very enjoyable film. Not just enjoyable, but laugh out loud funny and tearjerking in the life lessons it imparts. It’s also got a far less problematic device for the body swap this time around and you get the absolute pleasure of seeing Manny Jacinto dance and Chad Michael Murray back lit by the sun as he gets off a motorcycle. Freakier Friday is purely a fun ride and sometimes that’s enough.
