Freakier Friday: nostalgia-soaked sequel explores grief and blended families

Twenty-two years after Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis first swapped bodies in the teen classic Freaky Friday, the beloved duo returns. This time there’s twice the chaos in an ambitious four-person body swap comedy dripping in noughties nostalgia. This sequel successfully recaptures the unapologetic girlish silliness that made the first film so beloved.

The timing couldn’t be better. Curtis is fresh from her Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All at Once, while Lohan is in the midst of her romcom renaissance in Netflix movies like Falling For Christmas (2022), Our Little Secret (2024) and Irish Wish (2024).

The film opens with a daydreaming Anna (Lohan), now in her late thirties, tearing it up on the electric guitar. It immediately recalls 2003 when Lohan first played the rebellious teen and aspiring rock star. Then reality hits.

This time, rebel Anna hasn’t swapped bodies with her mother – she’s become her mother. She’s a single mum working a busy job as a music producer, having shelved her rock-star dreams to raise her teenage daughter Harper (Julia Butters). Picking up where the last film left off, Anna’s mum Tess (Curtis) is still a successful therapist and author – though her latest foray into podcasting isn’t exactly going as planned.

The plot quickly sets up Anna’s new romance with fellow single-parent Eric (Manny Jacinto). He’s a charming British restaurateur who – much to Harper’s dismay – happens to be the father of her high-school nemesis Lily (Sophia Hammons). Ironically, the couple’s meet-cute in the principal’s office is incited by the girls’ feuding antics, including a science experiment that goes horribly wrong and an all-out food fight in the school yard.

At Anna’s bachelorette party, her and Tess are dragged into a palm reading by “Madame Jen” – a pushy but incompetent psychic and all-round grifter, comically played by SNL’s Vanessa Bayer. Harper and Lily are drawn into a separate reading and given a mysterious prophecy.

All four experience what feels like an earthquake, leading them to wake up with a rather unwelcome surprise: Anna and Harper have swapped bodies, as have Tess and Lily. Over the course of the film, Anna and Tess try to track down the elusive Madame Jen to undo the spell, while Harper and Lily use their new identities to sabotage their parents’ wedding.

While this ambitious four-person body swap is a little confusing at first (I often had to remind myself who was playing who), it hits its stride when the pairs go off on their respective capers. The concept is at its best when Harper and Lily (in Anna and Tess’s bodies) make a disastrous attempt to seduce Anna’s high school boyfriend (Chad Michael Murray), and when Anna and Tess in the teens’ much younger bodies bond over their newfound love of e-scooters.

As well as being “freakier” than its 2003 predecessor, this sequel packs a bigger emotional punch by revisiting themes of grief and blended families. Newcomer Lily is the surprising emotional core of the film – a young girl grieving the loss of her mum, homesick for her life in London, and struggling to find her place in a new family. The most poignant moments come through her unlikely bond with Tess.

That said, it’s a curious omission that Anna (Lohan) – who also lost a parent when she was younger – doesn’t share any meaningful moments with Lily. Curtis (as both Tess and Lily) does a lot of heavy lifting on this front.

Pure nostalgia

It could be argued that Freakier Friday didn’t need to retread the first film’s thematic ground at all. While the repetition does enable some degree of character development, it’s hard not to wonder what bolder risks could have taken after 22 years.

The film flirts with exploring teenage girls’ relationships with their bodies, including an over-the-top mirror scene where the teens recoil in horror at their older faces (despite Lohan and Curtis looking amazing), though mostly settles for cheap “old lady” gags.

Curtis groans about creaky knees, struggling to get off the floor and constantly needing to pee. These jokes feel out of place when she runs rings around her younger cast members and is undoubtedly the most dynamic presence in this film. At one point, Lily (in Tess’s body) overuses a lip plumper to absurd effect – a moment that hints at satirising beauty standards in the age of Botox and fillers but doesn’t dig much deeper than a surface-level punchline.

While Freakier Friday has some fun references to contemporary pop culture, from Love Island to The Great British Bake Off with a smattering of gen-Z lingo here and there, it is a self-aware throwback to noughties girlhood. The soundtrack features Britney Spears and the Spice Girls, Curtis rocks Baby Spice pigtails, and Lohan’s pink-tint shades look like they could have teleported straight from 2003.

Even Harper and Lily’s scheme to derail the wedding feels like an intentional nod to Lohan’s childhood film, The Parent Trap (1998) – a nod that’s underscored by a cameo from Elaine Hendrix, who co-starred in the film with Lohan.

Overall, the film delivers satisfying fan service, especially through the return of noughties heartthrob Murray, whose role is pure nostalgia for long-time fans.

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Harriet Fletcher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.