Nostalgia and fan service carry the day with this 22-years-in-the-making sequel.
Freakier Friday (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) arrives 22 years after its predecessor, Freaky Friday, which arrived 27 years after the movie it remade, Freaky Friday, which arrived three years after the book that inspired it, Freaky Friday. Got that? The 2003 film provides the basis for its sequel, which reunites Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, who played a mother-daughter pair who swapped brains, to highly comic effect. The new film ended up being a nice-enough late-summer success with a healthy $153 million run in theaters, although creatively speaking, doubling down on the switcheroo plot resulted in diminishing returns. Funny how that works, eh?
The Gist: When Anna (Lohan) “decided to be a single mom” – please don’t ask for details, for the movie offers none – she gave up her dream of being a rock star. She led the group Pink Slip for a while, and seems to have had some success – no details on this, either, sorry – but now works as a music producer so she can Be There for her teenage daughter Harper (Julia Butters). Anna’s mom Tess (Curtis) is Very Much There for both of them, and is slightly overbearing about it but it could be far, far worse, and is far, far better because she’s played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who we’ve always loved but love even more lately. Tess calls it “grand-co-parenting,” and she and Anna have apparently stayed on the same page enough for the past 22 years to stave off further brain-swap shenanigans, although the psychological fallout of all that remains unexplored. Details! Who needs ’em? Not Disney movies aimed at 10-year-old girls!
Harper is a sporty type who skips school to go surfing and wears a stocking cap and cutoffs. It’s important to note this in case she should find her brain in another person’s body, because she will inevitably dress that body in said wardrobe regardless of how silly it might look, but it’s helpful for those of us keeping track of who occupies which skull. Not that this will necessarily happen! I’m no movie spoiler person! Harper’s nemesis is her British exchange-student lab partner Lily (Sophia Hammons), who dresses all posh and always brags about her French boyfriend. Could these two be any more opposite? A very ridiculous incident between them at school results in Anna and Lily’s father Eric (Manny Jacinto) meeting in the principal’s office, and the principal (X Mayo) seems more interested in playing matchmaker than disciplinarian; it’s only a matter of time before the entire school erupts in a nigh-apocalyptic food fight and this principal gets pied in the face.
Much to the oh MY god of Harper and Lily, Anna and Eric hit it off and six months later they’re a few days away from getting married.
