FREAKIER FRIDAY - Mark Reviews Movies

Freakier Friday, Disney

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 7, 2025

The mostly unnecessary Freakier Friday at least knows to do one thing right. That's reteaming Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as the mother-daughter pair who swapped bodies in the 2003 film, an adaptation of a novel by Mary Rodgers (that had previously been the source material for two other movies). The two had a lot of obvious fun playing each other's characters, especially Curtis' performance as a rebellious teenager trapped as her middle-aged mother, and the pair are clearly having fun this time around, too.

Indeed, the movie is at its funniest and most successful when it follows their characters—mother Tess (Curtis) and now-adult daughter Anna (Lohan)—as they become vessels for the minds of an even younger generation of rebellious teens. Anna's body is overtaken by her daughter Harper (Julia Butters), who fears that her mother's forthcoming marriage will ruin the life she loves. Surely, a complicated and uncomfortable conversation might have avoided the ensuing mix-up, since Anna knows a thing or two about being in a similar situation as her daughter—not to mention the abundant problems that not talking can create.

Where would be the fun in that, though? Instead, Harper and soon-to-be stepsister Lily (Sophia Hammons), who can't stand each other for assorted reasons, are angry with each other, their parents, and Tess, who—as a professional therapist—has a habit of trying to playing counselor to her family members. Whatever happens after Anna and Lily's widower father Eric (MAnnay Jacinto) marry each other will make one of the girls very unhappy. Either the family will stay in sunny California, meaning Lily won't be able to attend a fashion school oversea, or they'll move to London, which means Harper will have to leave her friends and surfing behind.

It's not just Anna and Harper who swap bodies, however. No, that would be too easy and not, as the title suggests, high-enough stakes for a belated sequel such as this.

After the generational pairs speak to a psychic (played by Vanessa Bayer), Lily and her soon-to-be grandmother switch bodies, too. While it's not quite enough complication to require a flow chart, the additional swap does leave one wondering if the screenplay by Jordan Weiss has actually thought out the rationale for the Lily-Tess switch, beyond the fact that it's the only way to put the movie's leads back in a similar scenario as the previous film.

The movie seems to struggle with what to do with several of its characters, actually. There's little reason to worry about what Curtis and Lohan will do, playing teenagers in adult bodies who try to come up with elaborate plans to sabotage Anna and Eric's upcoming marriage with awkward results. The two have already pulled off this difficult trick more than 20 years ago with noteworthy results, and once again, it is funny to watch Curtis, playing a self-involved and appearance-focused teen, be utterly horrified at what she sees in the mirror.

Lohan has some fine moments, too, such as when she, as a quiet teen who has never had a boyfriend, tries to flirt with her mother's first boyfriend. Some will recall he was Jake (Chad Michael Murray), who found himself torn between an age-appropriate love interest, who suddenly started behaving like a drag, and the girl's mother, who was surprisingly youthful and cool. The scene itself is cleverly constructed and performed, as Lily-as-Tess attempts to give Harper-as-Anna seduction tips, but the most amusing part of it might be when Jake finds Tess in her hiding position. The guy still hasn't gotten over her.

There is, of course, the other side of this four-way body-swapping plot. While it's no fault of the actors, the Anna-as-Harper and Tess-as-Lily part of this story turns out to be a comedic and narrative dead end. The whole thing revolves around the pair trying to recapture and take advantage of their unexpected youth, meaning they eat a lot of junk food and ride around on motorized scooters—genuinely shocked when they fall and don't twist or break something.

It's little surprise there's so little for this pair to do, after all, since Anna and Tess worked out everything they needed to about their relationship, apparently, in the previous film. Were the filmmakers timid about presenting the notion that, maybe, things didn't resolve as cleanly as they might have seemed about 20 years ago, or would a more serious exploration of adult problems be perceived as too much of a distraction from the comedy? Whatever the case may have been for Weiss and director Nisha Ganatra, the end result remains the same, and we're left to wonder why the additional body-swapping is necessary if the movie can't figure out what to do with it.

There's surely a less-convoluted version of Freakier Friday that only swaps the characters who need swapping and, perhaps, leaves Curtis and Lohan to play mentors/guides to the ensuing comic chaos. Sure, we'd miss out on the one guaranteed element that would work again from the first film, but the sequel's story and new characters/actors might have had a chance to stand on their own.

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