Freakier Friday, a sequel to 2003’s Freaky Friday, stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as Tess and Anna Coleman. The story picks up years after Tess and Anna endured an identity crisis. Anna now has a daughter of her own and a soon-to-be stepdaughter. As they navigate the challenges that come when two families merge, Tess and Anna discover that lightning might indeed strike twice.
Within a month or so, comedy fans are getting a massive dose of nostalgia, with sequels to Freaky Friday and The Naked Gun hitting theatres, and a Happy Gilmore follow-up on Netflix.
For my money, I don’t expect any of them to be masterpieces, just a good-to-great time. As long as they were funny and didn’t ruin the original.
Thankfully Freakier Friday passes that test. All your favourite characters return, and they made great use of the newcomers. It’s the same body-swap twist, and once again it’s about family understanding and connecting with each other.
The original Freaky Friday, which I must not have seen for at least 15 years or so, was one of those movies as a child that everyone my age had seen.
And as a family story, it had cross-generational appeal, whether you liked Jamie Lee Curtis or Lindsay Lohan or not, you learn to love them one day.
The story hook is Curtis and Lohan’s characters swapping bodies with the two teenagers, so there’s plenty of fish-out-of-water moments as they don’t know how to act their new age.
It’s a bit slow in the beginning but once the story kicks into gear, it’s genuinely entertaining. All the main actresses deliver strong performances and most of the humour. The ending is very predictable, but you come away knowing that this family has resolved much of their differences.
Quite simply, if you liked the 2003 film, you’ll like this.
