Freakier Friday review: Get ready to party like it's 2003 all over again
This belated sequel is a fun fairground ride – and could spark a renaissance for Lindsay Lohan.
The belated sequel is becoming a thing. You know – that long-long awaited movie follow-up to a film or franchise from the past. Recently, we’ve had The Naked Gun, rebooted with Liam Neeson. Soon, it’ll be time for Jeff Bridges to get back on his Lightcycle for Tron: Ares and the boys to rock again in This Is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. But in the meantime, we have Freaky Friday’s body-swapping mother-and-daughter combo, Tess and Anna, ready to party like its 2003 all over again.
Reprising roles for Freakier Friday are Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan, the once-controversial star returning to one of her more beloved characters. Curtis's Tess Coleman now has her own podcast, while Lohan’s Anna is juggling single motherhood, with her 9th Grade daughter Harper (Julia Butters), and an impending marriage to the handsome-if-bland Eric (Manny Jacinto), father to Lily, (Sophia Hammons), who happens to be in the same year as Harper.
Naturally, the girls don’t get along, an issue stoked by the fact that Anna and Eric are planning to move back to London, where he’s from. With plans afoot to disrupt the approaching nuptials, the teen girls then encounter a fortune teller (former Saturday Night Live comic Vanessa Bayer), who amusingly has a number of side-hustles, including printing business cards. Then, before you know it, the swap is on. Anna and Harper unwittingly trade bodies, while Tess and Lily also transfer.
The initial shock-horror discovery is fun, especially with Curtis yelling “I’m bloody decomposing!”, but director Nisha Ganatra (The High Note) struggles to get the balance right. While sequels always must deliver bigger and better, the ambition to offer up a four-way body swap, amping up the lunacy of the original, is also the film’s downfall. Too often, you’ll find yourself wondering exactly who is meant to be who amid all the chaos.
Amid all this, the men are clueless – including Anna’s ex Jake (Chad Michael Murray), who somewhat pointlessly is roped into the story, and Tess's husband Ryan (Mark Harmon). But that’s no surprise: this is all about the girls, with Anna’s one-time band Pink Slips even making an appearance. Talking of callbacks, Stephen Tobolowsky returns as Elton Bates, Anna’s sadistic teacher, who is still at the school – now causing torment for a new swathe of pupils.
A lot of it is very silly, as the Coleman family (and by extension Lily) all try and find each other again and come to realise what they love about each other. The nostalgia button is further pressed, with a bouncy soundtrack featuring Spice Girls and Britney Spears among others, and a colourful, carefree Y2K vibe that doesn’t outstay its welcome.
Scripted by Jordan Weiss, a fresh voice who clearly gets the generation gap comedy that comes as a part of the Freaky Friday franchise, there are some very funny lines – mainly at the expense of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers, as the likes of Coldplay and Facebook are ticked off for being out of step. A pity that some of the gags, like Tess's lips inflating due to some shenanigans, feel worn out the moment they limp to the screen.
For the most part, though, Freakier Friday is a fun fairground ride, led by the inimitable Curtis, a woman whose comic timing has always been spot on and so it goes here, and Lohan, who may yet see a career renaissance if this film hits big. It won’t exactly blow your mind – and we surely don’t need a ‘Freakiest Friday’ – but as reunions with characters from our collective past go, it’s a pleasant enough encounter.
Weapons is released in UK cinemas from Friday 8th August.
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Authors
James Mottram is a London-based film critic, journalist, and author.
