Back in 2003 Lindsay Lohan had her biggest box-office hit when she teamed up, in the body swap comedy Freaky Friday, with Jamie Lee Curtis. The 2003 version being a remake of Freaky Friday from 1976 featuring Jodie Foster in Lohan’s part.
Ask anyone to name a Disney classic and I’m sure Freaky Friday won’t be the first name on their lips. Given that 22 years have passed and no one was crying out for a sequel, it does seem a strange choice for Disney to resurrect it and only really goes to reinforce the belief that, in Hollywood, originality is pretty much dead.
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reprise their roles as Tess and Anna Coleman. The story picks up years after Tess (Curtis) and Anna (Lohan) endured an identity crisis. Anna now has a daughter, Harper (Julia Butters), of her own and a soon-to-be stepdaughter Lily Davies (Sophia Hammons). Lily’s from London and longs to return there with her father.
As in the first film the youngsters don’t appreciate the older members of the family and that’s reciprocated by the older members who have little time for the ways of the young.
In the 2003 version the body swap occurred in a Chinese restaurant this time it’s some bizarre psychic called Madame Jen (Vanessa Bayer) who transports the youngsters into the bodies of their older family members. With the only way to return to their own bodies is to see life through the eyes of their, depending on who they are, younger or older relatives.
The first half of Freakier Friday mostly involves jokes about Gen Zs’, millenniums and how old people constantly break wind.
Both Mark Harmon and Chad Michael Murray return to reprise their roles but needn’t have bothered as both pretty much hang about in the peripheries of the story with very little to do. Harmon looks perpetually bored whilst Chad Michael Murray’s main scene involves having Lindsay Lohan embarrassingly girating in front of him.
Freakier Friday is a film for the girls in the cast and, as in the 2003 version, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan just about muster enough enthusiasm to make the whole thing watchable.