Like most “Freaky Friday” fans, I was both excited and anxious to hear that a sequel starring Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis was coming out 20+ years after their reboot of the original film. Mostly because follow-up films are often hit or miss, especially when we’re talking about follow-ups to Y2K classics that are almost always hard to top.
“Freaky Friday” became so iconic, most people forget that the beloved 2003 Disney movie is actually a remake of the 1976 film starring Jodie Foster (which is based on a Mary Rodgers novel).
That said, “Freakier Friday” understandably had high standards to live up to — or so I thought before screening the film.
The sequel, which marked the return of Lohan and Curtis as a mother-daughter duo, is an obvious nod back to the magic that started it all, but with a new multigenerational twist. Instead of only Anna (Lohan) and Tess (Curtis) swapping bodies, Anna’s teenage daughter, Harper (Julia Butters), and her soon-to-be stepsister, Lily (Sophia Hammons), find themselves experiencing an identity crisis, too, as they protest the merger of their families with Anna’s marriage to Eric (Manny Jacinto), Lily’s father.
Of course, the four-way switch yields all sorts of hilarious shenanigans that harken back to what got millennials hooked on “Freaky Friday” decades ago. And for the most part, it works.
