Film Review: Freakier Friday
Here We Go Again
INTRODUCTION
This is a quick review of the newly released film Freakier Friday. Please note that this is just one of the many movies I will have watched each year, and my initial grade for this film may change over time, for better or worse. To stay up to date on my thoughts about other movies and any potential changes in my opinion on this one, follow me on Letterboxd.
If you enjoy these reviews, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could share this newsletter with family and friends who might love receiving film reviews, classic movie lists, and Oscars projections straight to their inbox.
PLOT
Via Letterboxd: 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 myriad challenges that come when two families merge, Tess and Anna discover lightning might indeed strike twice.
REVIEW
Writing this review overnight on a Sunday morning, I can’t help but find it bizarre that all the film discourse this past weekend has been orbiting around the new horror movie Weapons, when in reality there’s another release that, for a certain generation, should have been the buzziest event of the week; a legacy sequel to a “zillennial” modern classic. I’m talking about Freakier Friday, the follow-up to 2003’s Freaky Friday.
And to be clear, I don’t mean the 1976 original, the 1995 TV remake, or even the 2018 Disney Channel musical version; no, this is a direct sequel to the Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis iteration, the one that became the definitive adaptation of Mary Rodgers’ oft-retold body-swap story for so many.
I’m old enough to remember being a little kid watching reruns of both the ’76 and ’95 versions on the Disney Channel, long before the Lohan and Curtis film ever hit theaters. By the time 2003 rolled around, I was just coming out of middle school, so I never viewed that movie as the only version. But I can see how, for an entire generation younger than me, it quickly became their definitive Freaky Friday. What was, at the time, simply another entry in Disney’s “let’s remake our old catalog” era has, in the two decades since, grown into a beloved cultural touchstone.
Rewatching the 2003 film recently, right before grabbing tickets for Freakier Friday, I was surprised at how much better it played for me now than in my memory. So much so that I’d probably slot it somewhere in my personal top 15–20 films of that year. What really stood out were the performances, Lohan and Curtis don’t just “swap bodies” in a gimmicky sense; they completely embody each other’s characters in ways that still feel fresh and funny today.
Twenty years later, this new legacy sequel arrives in the shadow of another Disney nostalgia play with Hocus Pocus 2. I say that as someone who loves the original Hocus Pocus but found its sequel pretty middling. So, given the trailers for Freakier Friday, I wasn’t exactly bursting with confidence. Like so many sequels, it tries to “go bigger,” this time expanding the body-swapping from just mother and daughter to four characters. Alongside Lohan and Curtis, the teenage roles go to Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons, with the plot giving all four their turn in someone else’s shoes.
To my pleasant surprise, this more complicated setup actually works. The film uses the expanded swap premise to explore themes of grief, blended families, and identity in ways that feel both sincere and accessible. It also makes a conscious effort (for the most part) to acknowledge and reintroduce supporting characters from the 2003 film, integrating them naturally rather than just as fan-service cameos. Lohan and Curtis slide back into their roles like they never left, and their young co-stars hold their own remarkably well.
That said, the film isn’t without its flaws. The first act, in particular, has a made-for-Disney+ gloss to it, like Hocus Pocus 2, and there are stretches where the story beats line up almost too neatly with the original. While the four-person body swap keeps things lively, the plot is incredibly predictable, ultimately feeling more like a companion piece than a bold continuation. And, in a change that didn’t sit quite right with me, the grounded, working-class energy of the 2003 setting has been replaced with a glossy Beverly Hills aesthetic that feels more in line with modern city-set films than the world Curtis and Lohan inhabited two decades ago.
Still, Freakier Friday does enough right to avoid being a disappointment. It’s charming, heartfelt, and better than it had any real right to be given the current track record of Disney legacy sequels. It’s not going to dethrone the 2003 film, but for its biggest fans, it’s a warm and surprisingly thoughtful follow-up. A pleasant surprise and a worthy, if slightly safe, revisit to a body-swapping favorite, I give it just enough to be a B+ in my book.
GRADING
