Hollywood leaves no good thing untouched. This week’s case in point is Freakier Friday, a sequel to the 2003 remake of the 1976 Disney original that catches up with Jamie Lee Curtis’ mom and Lindsay Lohan’s daughter on the eve of new familial upheaval.
Nuptials are once again the catalyst for parent-child tensions and, with them, body-swapping hijinks in Nisha Ganatra’s follow-up, in theaters August 8, whose bright, bubbly spirit fuels nonstop gags about the horrors of being old as well as a sweet celebration of finding love and belonging. It’s no novel—reinvention, but it’s cute enough to at least partially overcome its strained and uneven structure and performances.
Freakier Friday is 14 minutes longer than its predecessor because it has to handle twice as many switcharoos.
Tess (Curtis) is still a therapist while Anna (Lohan) is now the manager of pop star Ella (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan)—a not-insignificant departure from her own glory days as a teeny-bopper punk rocker—and a mom to ninth-grade surfer Harper (Julia Butters), who wears beanies and complains about her posh and pretentious lab partner Lily (Sophia Hammons).
Unfortunately for Harper, when she and Lily get into a massive food fight that nets the entire class an in-school suspension, Anna is called to the office and, during the parent-teacher conference, meets Lily’s dad Eric (Manny Jacinto). It’s love at first sight for the single parents, and following a snappy scrapbook-style montage, the two are engaged to be married, much to the dismay of their at-odds offspring.
All the pouting and bickering in the world can’t derail Anna and Eric’s wedding plans. Magic, however, does the trick at an Anna bachelorette party that resembles a bar mitzvah, where Anna and Tess are forced by psychic Madame Jen (an amusing Vanessa Bayer) into having their fortunes read.
Before you know it, the earth is shaking and., the next morning, everyone has traded places. Anna is now Harper and Tess is now Lily (and vice versa), begetting lots of rise-and-shine freaking out that’s dominated by Curtis, who as the British teen wails about the fact that she’s “decomposing,” her face is lined with “crevices,” and she has “no lips.” The Oscar winner did the same thing the last time around, but such unoriginality can initially be forgiven because of Curtis’ gung-ho turn, which has a panicked intensity that earns chuckles.
The same can’t be said of Lohan, whose Anna is a far duller and more reserved protagonist whom the actress embodies with little charm. Only in a scene that finds her teen-in-a-mature-frame character visiting Anna’s old flame Jake (Chad Michael Murray) does she come alive, affecting a series of exaggerated come-hither poses that match the proceedings’ zany tone. Otherwise, alongside the dynamic Curtis, she’s too restrained and blandly expressive to provide the film with necessary balance.
Exacerbating that problem is the story’s focus on Hammons and Butters’ adultified teens, whose threads are treated as such afterthoughts that they quickly prove aggravating and ignorable—a shame given that, when granted the opportunity, both young actresses show modest flair for imitating their illustrious co-stars.
Freakier Friday is thus lopsided, and the further it proceeds down its wacky path, the more it feels bloated. That Eric is treated as just an unassailable good guy is no surprise considering how the first film handled (and this one similarly handles) Tess’ husband Ryan (Mark Harmon). Yet things get repetitive fast, in terms of duplicating what worked both 22 years ago and its early bits.
Now inhabiting adults, Harper and Lily speed around in sports cars, try to drink champagne, and give Anna and Tess’ hair and wardrobe a makeover. Lily also habitually comments unflatteringly on Tess’ body, peaking with her injecting Curtis’ lips full of filler right before she takes a passport photo that, eventually, threatens to become her book’s author’s portrait.
Jordan Weiss’ script revolves around Harper and Lily’s attempts to stop their parents from tying the knot because they hate each other and don’t want to move (Harper fears they’ll relocate to England; Lily loathes the idea of remaining in California).
This primary narrative is decorated with additional complications and tensions. Anna bristles at Tess’ intrusive co-grand-parenting. Harper learns that Anna gave up her rock star dreams to be a mom—and is, in fact, still writing songs, one of which client Ella wants to perform at her upcoming show. All in all, these numerous concerns make Freakier Friday not simply overstuffed, but messy—although everything is pitched at a buoyant and silly register that keeps the material from fully collapsing under the weight of its (largely decorative) subplots.
When it’s humming, Freakier Friday taps into its ancestor’s rambunctious energy, and there are a few one-liners aimed directly at the post-35 crowd that hit home—the best of which is Harper and Lily searching for Jake’s contact information on Facebook, which they describe as “like a database of old people.”
Frequently, though, the film chooses to merely duplicate, especially during a finale set at a concert where Lohan’s character must take the stage with guitar in hand but no clue how to play it. For all the slight tweaks to established formula, Ganatra doesn’t take the creative chances that might have delineated this do-over and helped it compensate for the nostalgia-pandering (via both cameos and callbacks) that is a legacy sequel’s stock and trade.
If Freakier Friday never defines itself as necessary or inspired, Curtis makes it an intermittent delight. With frazzled gray hair and a collection of revealing dresses, the star makes the most of her screen time, whether she’s posing like a model in high fashion, crawling around a record store floor (and then, when caught, recovering awkwardly), or tearfully expressing Lily’s objection to her dad’s re-marriage because of the anguish she still feels about her mother’s untimely death.
Ganatra’s film is, in the end, a familiar paean to acceptance, healing, understanding, and the manifold joys of blended families. Yet primarily, it’s a showcase for its 66-year-old headliner, whose comfort with making jokes at her own expense is totally understandable since, as she continues to prove, she’s only getting better with age.
