‘Freakier Friday’ review: Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan reunite for more body-switch laughs

Dir: Nisha Ganatra. US. 2025. 111mins.

The body-switching gets even more complicated in Freakier Friday, an amusing but flimsy sequel to the 2003 hit family film, reuniting Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan for another round of mother-daughter bonding and fish-out-of-water comedy. Unlike Freaky Friday, which saw their characters magically trade places, four women swap bodies this time as three generations come to understand each other’s challenges and perspectives. Late Night director Nisha Ganatra brings a bighearted sincerity and more than a few touching moments, and it is a pleasure to see Lohan back in a major big-screen role. But her charming performance cannot compensate fully for a perhaps unavoidably convoluted plot.

Lohan remains a lively, witty presence

Disney unveils Freakier Friday in the UK and US on August 8, hoping that audiences will be hungry for a follow-up to a 22-year-old film that grossed a sterling $161m worldwide, cementing the young Lohan’s rising stardom. She and Oscar winner Curtis are joined by Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons, and this sequel could find a warm reception with precious little at the multiplex that caters primarily to female audiences. 

Anna (Lohan) is now all grown up, working as a high-powered Los Angeles music manager and raising her teen daughter Harper (Butters) on her own, although her intrusive mom Tess (Curtis) tries to help as well. As Freakier Friday begins, she falls in love with Eric (Manny Jacinto), a celebrated UK chef whose snooty teen daughter Lily (Hammons) annoys Harper. But Anna and Eric decide to get married, which disappoints their feuding children who want nothing to do with one another. Then, after meeting with a medium, the four women wake up the next morning to discover they have switched bodies: Anna and Harper have swapped places, and likewise so have Tess and Lily.

Based on Mary Rodgers’ 1972 book, which was previously adapted into a 1976 film starring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris, the 2003 Freaky Friday generated steady laughs from the sight of Curtis acting like a modern teen, while Lohan slyly embodied Anna’s more mature mother. Freakier Friday raises the degree of difficulty by doubling the number of characters impacted by the mysterious spell. Consequently, the sequel’s plot is significantly more intricate: Harper (as Anna) and Lily (as Tess) conspire to break up their parents’ relationship so they will not become step-siblings, while Anna (as Harper) and Tess (as Lily) try to keep the imminent wedding on schedule.

Ganatra has demonstrated a knack for crowdpleasing, albeit shallow comedy with 2019’s Late Night and 2020’s The High Note. Those same qualities appear here as the filmmaker moves the story along at an agreeable clip, even when Jordan Weiss’s script gets bogged down juggling Freakier Friday’s four main characters — to say nothing of Eric, who is unaware of what has happened. Part of the sequel’s fun comes from watching the filmmakers try to keep all these narrative plates spinning as nearly every scene involves one of the women attempting to fool someone into thinking she is actually the person she looks like. But the results are fairly hit-or-miss, with some sequences endearing while others strain for laughs.

Lohan hinted at her star potential with Freaky Friday: at 17, she was a poised comedian able to navigate that film’s emotional undercurrents while ably playing her character’s mother inside her daughter’s body. Sadly, the actress was soon derailed by tabloid scandals and addiction, her career imploding in the process. Fans will be cheered, then, to learn Lohan is one of the sequel’s highlights, this time portraying her wilful daughter inside Anna’s body. There is an undeniable meta element to the humour as Lohan essentially switches generational places with her Freaky Friday self, and she remains a lively, witty presence. Much of Freakier Friday concerns the teenagers realising aspects of their parents that they had never appreciated, and Lohan poignantly captures Harper/Anna’s change of heart about her mom.

As Anna (inside Harper), Butters adeptly mimics Lohan’s mannerisms, channeling Anna’s anxious tics and self-help chatter. Some of the other performances can be too broad — Curtis mugs frequently as Lily (inside Tess), who is horrified by how old she is — but Freakier Friday’s good-natured sweetness helps paper over some of those deficiencies. What is more difficult to ignore is the story’s labyrinthine narrative complications, which hinder this sequel from conveying the simple, genuine sentiment that made the 2003 film so affecting. Tears are shed and lessons are learned, but Freakier Friday is ultimately weighed down by its body-switch conceit rather than being transformed by it.