Freakier Friday | Directed by Nisha Ganatra // Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons, and Manny Jacinto
Set the mood with some music!
Summary (Spoiler-free): In Freakier Friday, it’s been 20 years since Anna (Lindsay Lohan) and her mom Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis) swapped bodies and learned to walk in each other’s shoes. Now, with Anna planning a new marriage and Tess stepping into grandma territory, history repeats itself, only this time, the swap gets even messier.
Sometimes a movie doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes it just needs to have a good time doing donuts in the parking lot, and Freakier Friday is exactly that.
Manny Jacinto. Put him in all the movies. Bortles!
Let’s be honest: this sequel had no business being as enjoyable as it was. When I first heard about Freakier Friday, I rolled my eyes so hard I pulled a muscle. A legacy sequel to a body-swap comedy from 2003 that was already a remake? With a quadruple swap and a psychic barista? On paper, this sounds like the kind of thing that would get buried on Disney+ and forgotten by Tuesday. But somehow, against all odds, Freakier Friday is pretty fun.
The biggest reason this works? Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis. They are the whole show. Their chemistry hasn’t lost an ounce of its charm since the original. Curtis is in full chaotic mode here, strutting around in punk jackets and shouting about pickleball injuries and senior vitamins with the kind of manic energy that only she can make feel sincere. And Lohan... and it feels so good to say this... is back. She’s funny again. Warm again. She’s got that spark again. Whoever gave her this role should be knighted because this is the best she’s been in years. The way she plays both a teenager trapped in her mom’s body and a stressed-out adult trying to flirt with Chad Michael Murray while inhabiting her own child? That’s range, baby.
There’s something joyful about the entire cast’s commitment to the ridiculous. Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons deserve credit for holding their own in what could have been completely thankless roles. The jokes are hit or miss, but when they hit, they really hit. There’s a sight gag in a pharmacy that had me laughing way harder than I expected, and a musical callback moment that earns its nostalgia instead of just pandering. Also: Vanessa Bayer's bizarre, overly long cameo as a palm-reading barista nearly derails the whole movie and yet somehow fits the tone perfectly.
It’s messy, sure. But there’s heart. You can tell everyone involved is having fun, and that sense of fun is contagious. You laugh with it even when it’s being dumb, which is more than I can say for most modern comedies.
Not everything lands. The plot tries to juggle way too much, like multiple swaps, a wedding, two teenagers who hate each other, a move to London, a weird food fight, and it never really slows down to make you care about any of it. The script clearly wants to hit both nostalgia beats and appeal to a new generation, but in doing so it kind of forgets to let either breathe. Scenes crash into each other without a lot of rhythm, and you’re often just along for the ride whether you know what’s going on or not.
Also, the logic of the swap mechanics makes zero sense. Like, at all. At one point, I completely lost track of who was inside which body and just started going with the vibes. That’s not always a bad thing, but if you’re hoping for clever narrative symmetry or a tight story arc, this ain’t that movie.
Still, none of that ruins it. The vibe is what matters here, and Freakier Friday has enough vibe to coast through its weaker moments.
If there’s one part of the movie that didn’t quite work for me, it’s the attempt at generational commentary. The jokes about Gen Z and boomers often feel like they were written by someone who skimmed Twitter in 2019. Lines about "Facebook being a database for old people" or jokes about "holding space for feelings" feel dated in a way that’s less clever and more “cringe uncle trying to be relatable at Thanksgiving.”
It’s clear the movie wants to bridge the generational gap with love and humor, and that’s nice, but it doesn’t always stick the landing. A little more subtlety would have gone a long way. Not every moment needs to be a meme.
Freakier Friday is kind of like a sleepover movie. It’s chaotic, sugar-fueled, sometimes too loud, occasionally makes no sense, but you’re glad you were there. It doesn’t have the clean storytelling of the original, but it might actually be more fun, looser, wilder, and full of the kind of weird little moments you’ll find yourself quoting later.
It’s not perfect. But it’s not trying to be. It’s trying to be fun, and on that front, it succeeds. Jamie Lee Curtis is a maniac in the best way. Lindsay Lohan is, finally, exactly where she belongs. And the whole thing feels like a reminder that even the dumbest body-swap comedy can hit the right emotional note if the people involved really care.
And if this is the movie that fully brings Lohan back into the spotlight? Then Freakier Friday was worth it just for that.
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