Freakier Friday

Freakier Friday
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Butters, Sophia Hammons
Directed by Nisha Gantara

2003's "Freaky Friday" was a fun, delightful, family-friendly romp where an estranged mother and daughter swapped bodies to learn lessons about themselves and their relationship with each other. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan excelled in their roles, and the two remained very close friends as the years progressed and Lohan in particular had a severe falling out of grace. Curtis always wanted to do a sequel, and finally got her wish twenty-two years later, with the result being "Freakier Friday" - a film that keeps the heart, emotion, comedy, and delightful nature of the original, but amps it up with more body swapping that sometimes became confusing, and a runtime that could've been cut a bit shorter.

Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a successful therapist and has a great relationship with her daughter Anna (Lindsay Lohan), a now-single mother to teenage Harper (Julia Butters), a free-spirited girl who'd rather catch waves than catch As in school. One day Anna meets successful restaurateur and widower Eric Reyes (Manny Jacinto), and the two have instant chemistry, to the chagrin of Harper and Eric's daughter Lily (Sophia Hammons), who both already have distaste for each other. When Anna and Eric get engaged, both girls worry about the upcoming nuptials - Harper about possibly moving to London where Eric and Lily are from, and Lily worrying this new family dynamic will lead Eric to forget about her mother.

At Anna's bachelor party, they all meet with a psychic who gives them an ominous message, and the next day they find themselves swapped - Anna is in Harper's body and Harper is in Anna's, while Lily is in Tess's body and Tess is in Lily's. While Anna and Tess work to set everything right, Harper and Lily use their clout as newly-adult people to try to break up Anna and Eric for good, leading to hilarious and heartbreaking consequences. 

Generally the rule of thumb for a sequel is to make things bigger and crazier, and "Freakier Friday" pulls that off with a quadruple swap instead of two, which does at some points seem confusing, but thankfully not enough times to really stand out. It also adds to the tension that one of the bodies swapped isn't a part of their family, so seeing the dynamic of Harper and Lily in Anna and Tess's bodies is more intriguing than them being sisters originally, while Anna and Tess in Harper and Lily's bodies pretty much act how you'd expect. They've done this before and knows how to solve it, but Harper and Lily don't want that to happen right away, and as Anna and Tess learn the joys of being young again, they too don't seem too quick to reverse the body swapping process.

Yet there's a ticking clock this time around, and that's Anna's upcoming wedding to Eric which is supposed to take place in a few days. Harper and Lily aren't excited about the wedding and - in Anna and Tess's bodies - try to break the two of them up, with Harper learning how much Eric really loves her mother. The two girls bond over their shared hatred, and leads to some truly tender moments between the two. Anna and Tess have more freedom in their roles, however, as again they're the ones who know what's going on, but they too have some tender moments as they talk about motherhood and the future.

Jamie Lee Curtis is one of cinema's most iconic actresses, and also someone who embraces her age as well as relating to the youth, starring in Activia commercials while also returning to her legacy role of Laurie Strode in the 2018 "Halloween" and its sequels. She's a young blood in the body of an older woman, and you can see she's having the time of her life in this role. Lindsay Lohan has obviously had a rough go at it in recent years, with her drug use, arrests, and other negative aspects leaving a black spot on her Hollywood career (this is her first major big-screen role since "I Know Who Killed Me" in 2007), and seeing her not just on the mend - but thriving - is inspirational, and gives hope that anyone can change their lives for the better. Newcomers Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons are given the brunt of the work (and, hilariously, both weren't even born when "Freaky Friday" came out) and pull it off tremendously. Butters' Harper is an old soul in a young girl's body, and being able to play Anna so perfectly allows Butters to go against the grain, while Hammons' Lily gets to see the different side of life beyond her wealthy standing.

At almost two hours, "Freakier Friday" is sometimes a dredge to go through, particularly in the film's beginning. Once the body swap happens (like forty minutes in), the comedy amps up and it really speeds things up, but the pacing at the start has a lot to be desired - and for a movie, that's an issue, because you want to get the audience's attention from the get-go. It shouldn't take a lot of time to introduce the characters, since we already know two of them, and the new ones (Harper and Lily) really don't have much depth to them: Harper is a surfer with a spirit of her own like her mother was at her age, and Lily is a stiff, snooty fashionista who acts smarter than she really is. That's about it, and something that could've been told in ten minutes as opposed to forty, but honestly that's the film's only really negative mark to it: the rest is a laugh-out-loud comedy of errors that follows the traditional path, but thanks to four more-than-capable lead roles, manages to pull it off extremely well.

Apart from the elongated runtime, "Freakier Friday" is a surprise joy that I wasn't expecting, a movie that touches on the family dynamic and the deeper meanings of life that everyone - no matter our age - go through.

The Score: A-