Lohanissance

Freakier Friday

Director: Nisha Ganatra

Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Jamie Lee Curtis, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, Manny Jacinto, Chad Michael Murray, Mark Harmon, Vanessa Bayer

Released: August 8, 2025

Viewed in theaters: August 13, 2025

When I reviewed the 1976 Freaky Friday and its 2003 remake almost ten years ago, I said that the 2003 version was far superior and I still stand by that. I really like the 2003 movie with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis and was excited when I found out there would be a sequel and of course I had to see it. While I did enjoy it, the original (as in the 2003 film, not the '76 movie just so we're clear!) is still better. One thing I didn't know about the 2003 version (or maybe I did know, but just forgot, but it wasn't something I mentioned in my review) is that they asked Jodie Foster to play the mom, but she passed. To be honest, I'm kind of glad she did. For one thing, I can't see anyone as the mom but Jamie Lee Curtis. (Though I also learned that Annette Bening was originally cast as the mom, but had to drop out.) Jodie Foster is a great actress (she's got two Oscars!), but she's not known for her comedic roles. Silence of the Lambs?? Definitely not a comedy! The Accused? Have you seen that? Most definitely not a comedy! I've never seen Contact or Nell (I know, deep cuts there), but I'm guessing those aren't comedies either! It would have been fun if they had done a reverse Panic Room and Jodie Foster had a cameo as someone on the phone...or even as a patient of Tess's. (I call it a reverse Panic Room because Nicole Kidman was supposed to be in that movie, but wasn't able to, so she had a cameo on the phone as Jodie's character's ex's new wife.) So yeah, I'm glad they kept the two Freaky Friday movies separate...as they should be! 

Freakier Friday shares a lot of DNA with its 2003 counterpart. In the first movie, Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) is getting married and in this movie, Anna (Lindsay Lohan) is getting married! Like, could they at least try to come up with something new? Freakier Friday is a little more convoluted because it involves four people who get body swapped, but it's really not that complicated; it just sometimes doesn't make sense. Having Anna and Tess switch bodies like they did in the first movie, really wouldn't make sense since Anna is in her 30s now. Both women are mothers and are responsible adults with jobs...it would be a bit of a boring movie if they switched again. No, we need to bring in some more teens. Anna has a daughter, Harper (Julia Butters), who she's raising as a single parent, but Tess is helping her co-parent her (I think that's the word she used). I don't remember if they said how old she is, but I'm guessing she's probably supposed to be fifteen, like Anna was in the first movie. There's a new girl at school who Harper can't stand. Lily (Sophie Hammons) is British and she acts like she's better than everyone else and brags about her French model boyfriend (who, spoiler alert, isn't real). The girls get into a fight during a science experiment and ruin the classroom and Anna and Lily's dad, Eric (Manny Jacinto) are both called to the school for their daughter's behavior and it's pretty much love at first sight. It's pretty ridiculous and the movie knows it as the teacher calls a restaurant for them and sets them up on a date. We then get a obligatory montage of them going on dates and falling in love until they're engaged and neither girl is thrilled about this, obviously. I much prefer the original when Tess was already engaged to Ryan. I understand why they did it this way, but it's ridiculous these two people are moving this fast. 

So throughout about the first third of the movie, it was driving me crazy because I was trying to place who Eric was. I knew I recognized him from some show or movie I had seen him in. Then, it suddenly hit me that he looked an awful lot like Jason from The Good Place and when I got home that was indeed him. I think it took me awhile to place him because this character is so different from his character in The Good Place (and if you've seen that show, you know what I mean!) and he has a British accent (for some reason) in this one. At first, I thought they made him British since maybe the actress who plays his daughter is British in real life, but no, she's American. There is a plot point where the two adults are wondering if they should move to London or stay in Los Angeles. Can't they just make Lily and her dad be from New York? It's still a long way to move. 

So the way the switch happens is when everyone's at Anna's bachelorette party and a palm reader named Madame Jen (played by Vanessa Bayer) is there as a fun little novelty. Well, turns out her powers are stronger than she even knows and after reciting some mantra (which I can't remember because I've only seen this movie once (I usually am able to watch my movies on streaming platforms so I can watch with subtitles!), an earthquake appears that only the four females can feel and Anna and Tess share a look like, I hope that's not what we think it is, then both shake their heads. They both clearly have PTSD from what happened 22 years ago! 

So of course the switch happens at midnight and like I mentioned before, it's a little more convoluted than the first movie, but really not that convoluted. Anna and Harper have switched bodies. This makes sense that Anna, now a mother, has switched bodies with her daughter as she was the daughter who switched bodies with her mother in the first movie. But for some inexplicable reason, Tess and Lily switch places. Okay, I get that they don't want Tess and Anna switching bodies again because it's more fun when a kid is an adults body and vice versa and Anna and Harper make sense switching bodies, so that leaves only Tess and Lily to switch bodies, but yeah, I'm sorry, it makes no f***ing sense. Maybe I need to dig deeper to see if I can find a podcast or review that will make me change my mind about that, but I haven't come across anything so far. 

So now Tess and Anna are in the bodies of the two teenaged girls and while they're trying to remain calm and are discussing that they need to find Madame Jen, in the background we see Harper and Lily, now in the bodies of the two adult women run across the room and smack right into each other. Seeing Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan repeat this scene from the first is a really funny callback to the first movie...BUT it really doesn't make sense. If Harper is in her mom's body, then why would she try to collide with Lily who's in her grandmother's body? Yeah, makes no sense. 

I do think the way this scene was done in the first movie is way better and much funnier. There's also the fact that it was just two people and they were freaking out, but also knew they couldn't tell anybody what had happened. In this movie, Harper and Lily are freaked out, but they don't seem that freaked out to me. In fact, both teen girls in their adult women bodies seem to think this might be a great way for them to get what they want: have their parents break up. 

So the high school girls spend their day trapped in the bodies of older women (one, a woman in her mid-thirties, and another in her late sixties, but knowing high school kids, they probably think anyone over the age of 28 is ancient!) and the two grown ups spend their day as teen girls.

Anna and Tess, trapped in the body of the high school students have some amusing moments, but we're really here to watch Lohan and Curtis, so I'll just quickly try to remember as much as I can from their day: they go to school and are sent to detention and I can't remember why. Something involving a food fight, but I can't remember how it all started. Stephen Tobolowsky is one of many people from the first movie who came back for this movie. Remember, he played Mr. Bates who had a grudge against Anna because he once asked Tess out in high school and she rejected him. That's such a petty thing. Of course the girls recognize him and are surprised he's still teaching there. I would be surprised too because he's in his 70s! 

Other people who are back from the first movie include Mark Harmon as Ryan, Tess's husband, Anna's younger brother makes an appearance at her wedding reception, her old band mates from Pink Slip, and of course, Chad Michael Murray as whatshisface. But we'll get to him in a minute. Even the mother and daughter from the Chinese restaurant where the whole thing started in the first movie make an appearance at Anna's bachelorette party. It's nice to know she doesn't hold a grudge against the mother for what happened a couple decades ago! 

Back to Anna and Tess who are being portrayed by the young actresses. There is a funny moment when they're outside (somehow, the entire detention class convinced Mr. Bates to move detention outside) and they want to try to escape and they look over and see something that will help with their escape. Well, the camera shows a shot of two motorcycles and I was thinking they were going to take those, but in the next scene they're riding scooters. Being that they're two adults trapped in teen bodies, they're being very responsible. The only sign of rebellion is when they go crazy with all the junk food they eat because, hey, why not. This is also a callback to the first movie when Tess, in Anna's body, goes crazy with the fries.

Meanwhile, Harper and Lily (you know, Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis) decide the best way to split up their parents is to try to get Harper's mom back with her old high school boyfriend, Jake (oh, yeah, that's his name). They find him on Facebook, something "only old people use" according to Harper. (Heh, she's not wrong. I actually remember when you had to have a college e-mail to use it. Also, if you think the Facebook reference is dated, I'm pretty sure they make a MySpace reference in the 2003 movie. Now that's antiquated!) They find out he works at a record shop and there's another joke about listening to a band that only old people like and that band is Coldplay. Lindsay Lohan as Harper is "flirting" with Jake and it's the most awkward, excruciating thing ever. He's very confused because he knows she's engaged and as far as I remember, they don't really keep in touch anymore. Though I don't know if that moment was more awkward then when he sees Tess and is asking her if her husband was still around. You remember how he had a connection with Tess in the first movie, but of course that was because it was actually Anna. It could also be that Jake is into older women. 

Anna is a music producer and on this particular day there is a photoshoot with a singer named Ella. Harper and Lily, in their adult bodies, decide to crash the photoshoot and we get a montage of Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis wearing crazy outfits and posing with the young singer. Earlier, Harper had found a song her mom wrote a few years ago and she assumed it was a love song her mom had written about Jake. 

There's a moment when the girls are in a car with Lily in Tess's body driving  and being that they're teen girls who haven't learned to drive yet, they drive very erratically. At one point they stop next to another car where there's a teen boy in the back seat and Lily starts flirting with him. I guess she forgot she was in the body of a 60-something woman? It reminded me of that scene in 13 Going on 30 when Judy Greer tells Jennifer Garner that this hot guy is checking her out (I think they're at a restaurant, it's been a minute since I've seen that movie) but Jennifer (who started the movie as a thirteen-year-old (you've all seen the movie or go read the review if you don't know what it's about!) thinks she's talking about the teen boy who's sitting nearby and she goes over to flirt with him. It's so cringe! 

Anna and Eric are supposed to have an interview with an immigration officer (oh, is this why they make them British?) and Harper, as her mother, is ready to fail miserably, but then she realizes how much Eric loves her mother because he knows the answer to everything, even obscure questions. She does not sabotage the interview as initially planned. She is coming around to her mom and Eric getting married, but that may be because Eric told her (thinking she's Anna) that it would be best for all of them to stay in Los Angeles. 

Lily is still determined to ruin the wedding and invites Jake to the rehearsal wedding. (Oh, yeah, the wedding is the next day, much like the first movie's "freaky Friday" happened the day before Tess's and Ryan's wedding.) Eric ends up calling off the wedding and to be honest, I can't remember exactly why. I don't think it's only because Jake was there. 

Lily has a heart-to-heart with Tess and realizes that she wants her dad to be happy so she talks to him (as Tess, because remember that's who's body she's in) and convinces him that he shouldn't throw away what he has with Anna.

Meanwhile, Anna has been invited to the concert Ella is performing that night because her old bandmates from Pink Slip are going to perform (maybe they've collaborated with Ella? IDK) so both she and Harper go, because obviously the real Anna is in Harper's body so she's going to need to hide backstage while her daughter performs onstage as herself. You think this is another callback to the first movie when Jamie Lee Curtis, portraying Anna, is backstage playing the electric guitar while Lindsay Lohan, portraying her mother, is onstage pretending to play the electric guitar during the scene when Pink Slip is performing "Take Me Away", that one song that seems to be their only song because they always play it. It's kinda like how The Wonders from That Thing You Do! always performed "That Thing You Do!" Anyway, the movie does NOT do what we were expecting and Harper (as Anna) invites her "daughter" (actually her mother, God, this movie is confusing when you're trying to explain it!) to sing "Baby" with her. Why does she invite her out on stage with her? Because just moments earlier, Harper found out that the song she thought her mom wrote about her former boyfriend was actually about her. The song is called "Baby" so she thought it was being used as a term of affection. (Personally, I've always hated when people call their significant others "baby" because it skeeves me out...the only time I'm willing to let it go if it's used in a song.) But, no, "Baby" is about her literal baby. If this girl had just listened to the lyrics, she probably would have figured it out. 

Anyway, Eric ends up at the concert and he and Anna end up together. By the time they are reunited, everyone has switched back to their rightful bodies. I honestly don't remember anything that happened after that, but everyone is happy and all is good in the world again. At least, in their world. I still think the 2003 movie is better than the 1976 original film and this movie.