A Fantastic Sequel 23 Years In The Making

2003’s “Freaky Friday” was a movie of its time — it had the music, the clothes, and most of all it had Lindsay Lohan. On the other hand, body swap comedies are forever. So it’s not completely unexpected that a sequel to this story would be made … except that it’s after 23 years. While everything old is being revived, sequelized, and reimagined these days, I for one, didn’t have “Freakier Friday” starring Lohan on my 2025 bingo card. And the fact that this is a fantastic sequel is even more surprising.

Full disclosure: I loved the first “Freaky Friday,” which I saw in the theater when it came out. I hadn’t watched it since, though, until I saw it in preparation for the sequel. It’s still funny and heartwarming, but very much of its early 2000s time. How could they update this story to accommodate both Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis, who play Anna and Tess Coleman, respectively, and stir in two high school unknowns (or at least unknown to me)? They actually do this quite well while still having plenty of time for Anna’s fiancé, Eric (Manny Jacinto); her first love, Jake (Chad Michael Murray), who still holds a candle for Tess (Curtis); and various other characters old and new.

The conceit continues to rely on the characters swapping bodies, but this time, it’s not a Chinese woman who invokes the magic but a woman who calls herself Madame Jen (Vanessa Bayer). And this time it works on four of them: Anna and her daughter Harper (Julia Butters) switch bodies, and for some reason Tess and Eric’s daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) swap bodies. The teens, in the bodies of Curtis and Lohan, want to break up their parents and will do almost anything to do it. Meanwhile, the adults, in the bodies of Butters and Hammons, try to figure out how to swap their bodies back. While we’ve seen the latter in the first movie, we haven’t seen the former, and since that’s where Curtis and Lohan are, that’s where most of our focus lies. 

But along the way we get Harper-as-Anna’s outings to dance lessons and an immigration interview with Eric as well as Lily-as-Tess trying to win a pickle ball championship (even though it’s the first time Lily has played) and going for an outing to the drugstore with her husband, Ryan (Mark Harmon). The plot is stuffed, but it never feels overstuffed, and that’s a testament to the writer Jordan Weiss and director Nisha Ganatra’s handle on the material.

The performances are almost all wonderful. In particular, the four body swappers get a lot of mileage out of the fact that the old characters are young and the young characters are old, especially Jamie Lee Curtis who has a blast making fun of herself, dressing in age-inappropriate outfits and doing age-inappropriate things. Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons are great additions to the cast, and Manny Jacinto, in particular, does a fantastic job as the father of Lily and fiancé of Anna. He’s been great for a long time, playing everything from a complete idiot in the TV show “The Good Place” to a fallen Jedi in “The Acolyte,” and he continues to reveal more of what he can do here. The fiancé is often a thankless role, but Jacinto makes it work.

The only actor that really gave me pause was the reason the first movie was so popular to begin with: Lindsay Lohan. She’s recently done several movies on Netflix and has generally been good in them, but here she seems a little … cautious. She does a good job in certain scenes, particularly when Curtis is egging her on, but at times, she seems almost like she’s overwhelmed or scared to go big when the script calls for it. I’m not sure what was holding her back, but I wish she had just let go and have fun.

The good news is when it comes to the music by Lohan’s made-for-the-movie band Pink Slip, she doesn’t disappoint. She does two numbers with the band, which includes Christina Vidal Mitchell as Maddie and Haley Hudson as Peg, and she can still rock out, even if one of the songs is two decades old.

The biggest reason to watch “Freakier Friday,” though, is that it gives you the same heartwarming buzz as the original. While the moral of the story and the journey the characters go on to get there is different, those who watched the first movie 23 years ago will find themselves having a similar reaction, except more so. That’s because with twice as many people involved in the body swap, twice as many people learn and grow from the experience in unexpected ways.

It turns out this is a really good movie, not just a cash grab. To be honest, I’m surprised. I’ve seen the trailers for “Freakier Friday” and they don’t do it justice. They make the movie look funny but shallow. However, in context, the moments shown in the trailers are not only much funnier, they have far more meaning. (Except when Curtis is grabbing “old person” drug store paraphernalia or getting lip filler. That’s just there for a laugh.) Overall, this is a comedy that doesn’t skimp on the sentimental stuff, although it never comes off as cloying or overly sweet. It’s an excellent comedy in the vein of the original, and I hope it’ll be as successful as that movie.

“Freakier Friday” comes to theaters August 8.